


notice me being around

by teamcap



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Harassment, Homophobia, Homophobic Language, Hook-Up, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Not Canon Compliant, Not Tony Stark Friendly, Party, Post-Serum Steve Rogers, Slurs, mentions of football and religion and homophobia later, new tags time, sam is the most amazing forever, thats for chapter 6 but eh whatever, these are all for chapter 7 but i will warn at the beginning too:, will warn appropriately
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-20
Updated: 2019-03-24
Packaged: 2019-09-23 08:53:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 26,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17077220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/teamcap/pseuds/teamcap
Summary: It’s sort of funny, really, the more Bucky thinks about it. Haha, ending up in bed after a party with a straight guy. Knee-slapping hilarity. The kind of thing that leads to a myriad of misadventures and an eventual happy-ever-after in Hollywood romantic comedies.But Bucky’s life is not a fun, box office love story of a movie.orSteve and Bucky hook up at a party. Misunderstandings, group projects, football games, and increasingly awkward run-ins ensue.





	1. one.

**Author's Note:**

> hi!! okay, so this is a commission for brie (i'm not sure what her ao3 is, rip), who asked for college au steve/bucky where they hook up at a party, alternating POV featuring pining bucky and angsty confused steve. fun!
> 
> chapters will come as soon as i can post them around my work schedule. for now, this. enjoy! 
> 
> this chapter is from bucky's pov, italics are flashbacks
> 
> title is from being around by the lemonheads

It’s sort of funny, really, the more Bucky thinks about it. Haha, ending up in bed after a party with a straight guy. Knee-slapping hilarity. The kind of thing that leads to a myriad of misadventures and an eventual happy-ever-after in Hollywood romantic comedies.

But Bucky’s life is not a fun, box office love story of a movie.

He’s lying very still in a bed that certainly isn’t his own, sure that if he moves too much some kind of alarm will go off and everyone left in the building will come rushing in and see that he has, somehow, ended up in bed with Steve. He grimaces at the thought, and turns his mind to how to get out of this particular situation. 

He isn’t necessarily opposed to being in bed with Steve - not at all, actually, not really. That’s not the point. The point is getting out of whoever’s bed he is currently in without waking up sleeping beauty. Bucky squeezes his eyes shut. 

_The music is so loud he can’t even hear himself think, and he lost Sam to the crowd - or to Clint, more likely - over an hour ago. He’d spent a few minutes making small talk to Wanda before she was swept away to dance by a pretty girl Bucky didn’t recognize. He’s standing in a corner and he’s fully aware he’s ticking all the boxes of what makes someone a loner at a party. He’s halfway through his plan of how he can leave without Sam’s insane Bucky-radar going off when Steve comes up to him._

_“I gotta say,” Steve says. “You look like you’d rather be dead than be at this party right now.”_

_“Not really my scene,” Bucky shrugs._

_“Yeah? Mine either,” Steve says, and Bucky does a double take._

_“Seriously?”_

_“Why so surprised?” Steve asks, taking a sip of his drink._

_“I dunno,” Bucky says. “Just… seems like you’d like it.”_

_“What makes you think so?”_

_“Pickin’ my brain your new favorite hobby, Rogers?” Steve grins._

_“Maybe so,” he says, looking around. “You’re probably the most interesting person at this party by a landslide, so.”_

_“I’m flattered. Anyway, it just seems like something you’d be into. You play football, you’re popular, y’know.”_

_“I’m on the team, I don’t really play,” Steve says. “But, no, not exactly my scene.”_

_“And here I thought we were friends,” Bucky says, feigning shock. “You aren’t a frat-boy type after all. You’ve been holding out on me.”_

_“I’m full of surprises,” Steve says, and Bucky could swear he winks._

Bucky shakes his head. Steve is still asleep and, thankfully, no longer laying across Bucky’s arm. Now or never, he decides, and slides away from Steve and towards the edge of the bed.

“Hmmph,” Steve grumbles, and Bucky freezes. He waits a minute and glances over his shoulder. Steve is still asleep. Bucky lets out a sigh of relief. He tiptoes around the room and grabs his clothes and shoes, slips them on, and slips out the door as quietly as he possibly can. 

Clint is passed out on the couch in the living room - Bucky is pretty sure this is his and Scott’s apartment, which he supposes is better in the long run than it being some stranger’s place where he had sex with his straight-ish friend. Although, he realizes, Clint being on the couch means that he was probably in his room. So. Maybe he had sex with Steve in Clint’s bed. College is fun. 

He gets out of the apartment and across campus to his dorm without any big hurrah. His phone is dead so he can’t check the time, but he prays to anyone who might be listening that it’s early enough that Sam is asleep or has gone off to parts unknown. Of course, today is not his lucky day. 

“Good morning,” Sam singsongs, spinning himself in half circles in his desk chair. 

“Can we have your Bucky-radar medically removed? Would it kill you?” 

“I don’t think you’ll get that lucky anytime soon. Where were you?” Sam asks nonchalantly, and Bucky gets the distinct feeling that Sam already knows exactly where he was. 

“Worried about little ol’ me?” Bucky drawls in his best southern accent. It’s horrible, and Sam grins. 

“Naturally.” 

“I fell asleep at the party,” Bucky says casually. Sam, as always, sees right through him. 

“Really? I think Steve did too.” 

“Is that so?” 

“Mhm,” Sam nods. “Clint texted me last night after I left - at 2, y’know, when you and I were gonna leave - and said he couldn’t get into his room.” 

“Unfortunate,” Bucky says. He’s got his back turned to Sam, rummaging through his stuff in an attempt to stop this conversation before he dies. 

“Well, he can fall asleep pretty much anywhere, so it was fine. But he’s a real light sleeper.” 

“Yeah?” Bucky can feel Sam’s eyes on him. He briefly wonders if a fall from their dorm room window would kill him. 

“Yeah. Well, anyway, I guess you can figure out the rest.” Bucky lets out a deep sigh. 

“Enlighten me.” 

“He woke up this morning when you were leaving his room.” 

“I’ll craft him a beautiful note declaring how sorry I am.” 

“Not necessary,” Sam says. “All you need to craft is an explanation to me about how you and Steve Rogers ended up in the same bed last night.” 

“We were drunk,” Bucky says quickly. He turns, arms full of what he needs to shower, hoping he can make a break for the door, but Sam practically flies across the room and stands in front of it, arms crossed. 

“Steve doesn’t get drunk.” 

“I was drunk.” 

“No you weren’t.” 

“Is this really that important? Is the world going to come to an end because I slept with Steve?” Bucky snaps. Sam holds up his hands. 

“Look, dude, you don’t actually have to tell me anything. I was just curious.”

“No, it’s - I’m sorry I snapped. It’s just… I don’t really know what happened. I don’t know what to tell you.” 

“You don’t - what?” Sam asks. Bucky groans, 

“I obviously know what happened, I know we -,” 

“Spare me the details,” Sam interrupts. Bucky glares at him. 

“I just don’t know… how it happened, exactly. I mean, one minute we’re talking in the middle of the party, and then Steve asks if I wanna go somewhere quieter, and then… spare you the details.” Bucky mentally pats himself on the back, because it’s only a tiny little lie. He remembers exactly everything that happened, minus the fact that he really has no idea how they went from talking about - okay, he can’t remember that either - to kissing. Making out. He shakes his head. 

“Hold on,” Sam says. His brows furrow, and Bucky desperately wishes he could make a giant hole appear in their room to swallow him up. “Steve… asked you if you wanted to go somewhere quieter?” 

“That’s what I said, Wilson. Very astute.” 

“Shut up. He asked you.” 

“We established that.” 

“He asked you,” Sam repeats, and Bucky scrunches up his face. 

“Stop saying that. You’re freaking me out.” 

“Just… think about it,” Sam says, moving out of the way of the door. “Enjoy your shower.”

“Weirdo,” Bucky mumbles. He moves past Sam and out the door into the hallway. And, because today is Bucky’s Worst Day Ever, Forever, he walks out of their doorway and straight into the person walking past. 

It’s Steve, because of course it is, Bucky figures. 

“Oh, sorry, I didn’t see y-,” Steve starts in his overly-apologetic, raised Catholic voice, and he stops abruptly when he realizes he’s talking to Bucky. “Oh. Um, hi Buck. Bucky. Hi.” 

“Uh, hi,” Bucky says. He ignores the way his stomach gets all weird and flippy when Steve calls him Buck. 

“Where, um,” Steve stammers. Ordinarily, Bucky might find his nervousness cute and endearing, but at this particular moment he finds it painfully similar to how he feels. “Where you headed?” 

"Uh, shower,” Bucky says after an awkwardly long second of silence. For added measure, the chipmunk running his brain makes him point towards the bathroom, and he considers again the out-the-window option. 

“Right. Duh,” Steve says. He wrings his hands and glances around. Bucky narrows the list of escape routes he has down to three, just in case there’s no swift end to the conversation. “Well. See you around.” 

“Yeah,” Bucky says, like an idiot. He thinks it might be the first time since he met Steve during their freshman year that he’s happy to stop talking to him. 

In the shower, he makes several lists. First, a list of reasons he has to transfer schools immediately, followed by new routes he can take around campus so he never sees Steve again, ways he can kill Sam, and possible methods of bribery that will convince his advisor to change his entire schedule so he no longer shares any classes with Steve. 

“What’s a fast and easy way to get expelled?” He asks as he walks back into the room, running a towel through his wet hair. 

“If you walk around like that enough maybe Steve will just jump your bones in the hallway or something, eliminates the middle man of having to talk about what happened.” 

“Given the horrifically awkward conversation we had in the hallway, I don’t imagine we’ll be talking about anything in the near future. If I vandalize the school statue do you think they’ll kick me out?” Bucky asks. 

“Do we have a school statue?” 

“Maybe,” Bucky shrugs. “Got any better ideas?” 

“He asked you,” Sam says after a moment, and Bucky flops face first onto his bed and groans into his pillow as loudly as he can. 

“Maybe something out in the universe will decide, ‘hey, we tortured him enough with all this Steve business, let’s give him a break and make sure they never see each other again’,” Bucky mumbles. 

“Doubtful,” Sam says. “Is that what you want?” 

“I can dream.” He doesn’t know exactly which part of what Sam said that he’s responding to. 

“He ask -,” Sam starts again. Bucky throws his pillow at him.


	2. two.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello!! i have returned almost a full month after posting chapter 1, sorry about that!!! this is the first steve pov chapter and frankly idk how i feel about it but i've had it written for a while so might as well. 
> 
> blanket warning for steve chapters: internalized homophobia & talk of religion. down the line if there is anything more serious i will put a warning before the chapter!
> 
> also - this fic is NOT tony stark friendly, i just wanna say that now. ok! i hope you guys enjoy

Steve runs in to Bucky not one, not two, but three horrendously awkward times in the week following the party. The first is the very next morning, outside Bucky’s room. Bucky looks like he wants to drop dead where he stands - Steve gets it. A few days later the two of them quite literally run into each other when Bucky is walking out of the library and Steve is walking in.

“Um, sorry,” Bucky says stiffly.

“It’s fine,” Steve says, and then decides, for some despicably stupid reason that is completely beyond his comprehension, to point at the building behind them and say, “library.”

Not his finest moment.

“Yeah,” Bucky says. “Gotta go.” He very nearly trips down the stairs in his frantic walk to get away from Steve. _Nice one, Rogers,_ Steve thinks to himself, _real smooth, that’ll make him want you._

Steve shakes his head. He can’t think like that. He doesn’t want Bucky.

They go three full days with no run-ins, and then Clint invites Steve over for a full day of midterm-cramming at his and Scott’s apartment. He readily accepts, hoping that a day of relative calm and studying will take his mind off of. Everything.

He shows up a few minutes early, because he knows they won’t mind, and because it’ll give him time to steal the comfiest spot in the corner of the overstuffed sectional Scott and Clint got… somewhere. Steve doesn’t want to know.

He knocks on the door even though Scott said he could just let himself in, and it’s opened a moment later by Sam.

“Hey, man,” Sam says, moving out of the way to let him in.

“Hey,” Steve says. “Didn’t know you’d be here. Studying for Fury’s midterm?”

“It might actually kill me. And yeah, Clint invited a bunch of people because he’s crazy,” Sam says, but his voice is fond. “So we took him up on it.”

At the word we, Steve looks around and notices for the first time that someone is sitting on the couch, in his favorite comfy-corner.

It’s Bucky. Steve almost curses God. This is fine. He can behave like a rational person and talk to Bucky without it being awkward.

“You,” he says. Maybe not off to the best start.

“Me?” Bucky says. Steve shakes his head.

“Uh, sorry. I didn’t know you’d be here,” he says, trying to keep his voice neutral.

“Surprise.” Steve laughs a little uncomfortably.

“Well it’s, uh, nice to see you.” Bucky nods, laughs just a little bit,

“You too.”

Steve nods at him a little stiffly and then breaks the uncomfortable eye contact, taking a seat in the armchair next to the window. He can feel Bucky looking at him, so he looks everywhere he possibly can other than directly at Bucky. It’s just the two of them in the living room since Sam left to go find Clint and Steve thinks he might die if no one else comes in soon.

He’s about to say something else that will end up being painfully awkward when the front door opens and Scott walks in. Steve thinks Scott must be his guardian angel.

“Hey guys,” he says cheerfully. “I got snacks!” And they are no longer alone, thank God, and Steve can watch Scott dump bags of chips into bowls and put them on the coffee table instead of pointedly not look at Bucky.

“Scott, you’re the love of my life,” Clint says when he walks in with Sam in tow, going straight for the salt and vinegar chips.

“Scott,” Sam says seriously, “if you steal my boyfriend from me we might have some problems.”

“Well, can you blame him? I have irresistible charm. And snacks.”

Natasha rolls in a few minutes later and she kicks Steve’s leg playfully and says hi before taking the spot next to Bucky and draping her legs across his lap. He barely seems to notice, just lifting his textbook and putting it back down on her without saying a word. Wanda comes last, holding hands with a girl Steve vaguely recognizes. He thinks she might have been at the party.

“Hey guys,” she says sweetly. “This is Anna Marie.”

“I hope it’s okay I tagged along,” Anna Marie says.

“Totally,” Scott beams. “The more the merrier.”

It’s really relatively calm and, to his credit, Steve gets more studying done than he thinks he will with Bucky sitting in the same general vicinity as him. After a few hours, Clint and Sam announce that they’re going to get pizza, and everyone decides to take a break. Steve strikes up a conversation with Anna Marie, who is very funny and quick witted and who fits in wonderfully with everyone else. He does, admittedly, get a little distracted when Bucky lets out a loud peal of laughter at something Natasha said. If Anna Marie notices, she doesn’t say anything, but Wanda shoots him a _look_ that he doesn’t like. Clint and Sam come back not long after and when they’re done eating they all go back to studying, which is fine. But Steve can’t focus.

He isn’t gay. He’s Catholic and he was raised going to church and he plays football – or, he’s on the team, whatever -  and he doesn’t have any problem with it but he just… isn’t gay. Or bisexual, or whatever. He just isn’t. Deep down he knows that what happened with Bucky was a mistake, that they were both kind of drunk and it got out of hand. And, besides, he’s pretty sure Bucky isn’t gay. He thinks, actually, that Bucky and Natasha might be dating. Or something. Which is fine, because Steve doesn’t like Bucky as anything more than a friend. He can’t. He doesn’t want to. But it doesn’t explain away the annoying pang in his chest when he looks at Bucky. After thinking it over for a minute he chalks it up to feeling bad that they haven’t talked about the fact that what happened doesn’t mean anything and they should, especially if Bucky is dating someone else.

They wrap up the study session a few hours later and Steve thinks, now or never, and catches Bucky as he’s walking down the sidewalk that leads from Scott and Clint’s apartment back to campus.

“Hey,” Steve says casually. He has to make this as easy as possible.

“Hey,” Bucky returns. Steve doesn’t say anything for a moment and the silence is only mildly awkward as they fall into step beside each other.

“Listen,” he begins after he builds up the courage, and Bucky looks at him.

“We don’t have to talk about the party,” Bucky says. “Really, it’s no big deal.” Steve hesitates.

“Okay. Well, I just want whatever awkward tension there is between us to go away, cause I think you’re cool and I, uh, like being your friend, I guess,” Steve says, then mentally punches himself in the face.

“Gee, thanks,” Bucky says, but he grins. “It’s fine. Nothing awkward, okay?”

“Okay, good,” Steve says. They fall back into silence, and then he remembers something. “So, you and Nat?”

“Me and Nat?” Bucky repeats, raising an eyebrow.

“You guys are dating, right? That’s cool.” Bucky looks at Steve like he has six heads, and then laughs so loudly Steve is pretty sure the entire campus can hear him.

“ _What?_ ” He says in disbelief. “Me and _Nat?_ ”

“Well, yeah,” Steve says.

“No, oh my God. We’ve been best friends since, like, middle school. We aren’t dating. Besides, both of us are gay.” Steve almost stops in his tracks but he manages to keep walking alongside Bucky like he didn’t just shake the very foundation of the no-awkwardness pact they had just made.

“Oh, okay,” he says. “Sorry, I just assumed.”

“It’s all good,” Bucky says. “Hey, I gotta make a stop, catch up with you later?”

“Yeah, sure,” Steve nods. Bucky smiles at him and pats him on the arm, because they’re friends, and Steve feels like he’s on fire. Steve makes the rest of the walk back to his dorm in less time than usual and sighs in relief when he walks into his room to see that his horrible roommate is nowhere to be seen. He puts his stuff away and then flops down on his bed.

Why did he feel so weird when Bucky left? Like his face was beet red and he was gonna throw up? He can’t think of any logical reason behind it, and that kills him. He needs an _answer._ He needs to call his mom.

“Hi, Stevie,” she says sweetly when she picks up.

“Hey, mom,” he says.

“How are you? How are classes?”

“Fine and fine,” he says. “How are you?”

“Oh, I’m fine. One of the ladies at church gave me some new recipes last Sunday so I’m gonna try them out today while I have some time.”

“Save me some,” Steve says, grinning.

“Always.”

“So, I have a question,” he begins, pausing to see if she says anything before he continues. “I have this friend, uh, Scott.”

“Okay,” his mom says. He can picture her, nodding and pulling out a piece of paper to take notes, because that’s what she does.

“Right, so, Scott is Catholic. And he’s never had any, uh, questions about himself or anything, but lately he’s been wondering if he’s gay. Or bisexual. Or something. And he asked me for advice, but I didn’t have any because I don’t know what he’s going through. But you always have good advice.”

“Well, I can’t tell him what he is, but I think he just needs to do some soul-searching. He’ll figure out who he is in time. Is he scared of his parents finding out?”

“Terrified,” Steve says.

“All I’ve got for him there is that it doesn’t matter what God they believe in, if they’re good people, if they’re good _parents_ , they will love him regardless. And if they don’t, well, I think they’re the ones who are in the wrong,” she says. Steve feels like his head may explode.

“Okay,” he says after a minute. “Thanks, mom, I’ll talk to him.” They say their goodbyes and he hangs up, feeling extraordinarily nauseous despite the conversation.

He isn’t gay. He just _isn’t._ No matter what his mom says, how she feels, he knows he can’t be. No one else in their church, hell, maybe in their entire religion would stand for it. Not to mention his friends back home, the football team, his _roommate_. He can hear Tony now, whining about how uncomfortable he feels rooming with someone who isn’t straight. Sometimes Steve really wants to punch him, but he doesn’t think God would look very approvingly on that either.

And that’s just the thing – it all comes back to God. Sometimes Steve doesn’t even know if he believes in God, much less follows everything the Bible says, but then he feels so guilty he doesn’t know what to do. He grew up in church, they all know him, they’d never let him come back.

He’s straight. That’s the end all be all to it, that’s it. So, maybe he just felt weird when Bucky smiled at him because there’s still some left over awkwardness about what happened between them. That makes sense, he thinks, they did sleep together. They can’t get over that in a day. Or a week, whatever. But they talked about it, they’re fine. He’s fine.

Steve is fine.


	3. three.

Bucky is fine. Really. Except maybe not, totally not, not at all. But he’s dealing with it.

“You are not dealing with it,” Sam says one day. Bucky is laying on his bed, a common activity for him now, after the big talk. “I don’t know _what_ you and Rogers talked about, but this is ridiculous.”

“I know that.”

“Look, I’m sorry for whatever happened, but this is not how you get over someone.”

“I shouldn’t have to get over someone I was never really with,” Bucky groans. “I hate feeling like this! Look what he’s done to me!”

“I thought you said the decision to just be friends was mutual.”

“It was. But he’s not moping, is he?”

“I don’t know. Probably not,” Sam says.

“I hate this. Heartbroken over a straight guy, yet again. Oh wise Sam Wilson, will I ever stop being a cliché?”

“Shut the fuck up,” Sam says, shaking his head. “Straight?”

“I’m not trying to sound like, like, a narcissist or something, but why else would he wanna make sure we were good after the party? Why would he ask me if I’m dating Nat?”

“Wild idea, maybe he’s confused because he always _thought_ he was straight and then he slept with a guy who happens to be one of his friends at a party.”

“Shut up,” Bucky frowns. “What if he regrets it?”

“Man, I don’t know. Clint and I talked like normal people and we were friends first and then we started dating. Just… try being friends with him.”

“You’re smart,” Bucky says, sighing. “I hate you.”

Over the next few days, he tries his best to just not think about it. A little difficult, given that he has been pining over Steve since before they ever slept together, but overall it works pretty well. Except for the fact that every time he and Steve interact in any capacity at all, Sam gives Bucky these _looks_ , which is very annoying and makes Bucky want to punch Sam in the face, but he doesn’t. Nat starts giving him looks too, which is even more annoying because he hasn’t even told her that he slept with Steve, but he figures she probably knows because they’ve shared the same brain since they were twelve years old. He figures she’ll talk to him about it soon enough if she really wants to.

The tipping point seems to be the hoodie thing, something Bucky didn’t even think about _before_ the party. He and Nat are on their way to a coffeeshop a ways off campus to meet up with Sam, Steve, and Wanda to have a cram study session for their lit class. They get there first and wait outside despite the chill in the early October air. When the others get there, Steve is literally shaking because he is an idiot, which Bucky already knew, and didn’t wear any kind of layers or sleeves of any kind.

“Cold, Rogers?” Nat asks playfully.

“Fuck o-off,” Steve says, teeth chattering. Bucky rolls his eyes and pops the trunk of his car, pulling out a hoodie. He’s kept a spare one in it since the day he met Steve, because he is constantly cold and constantly forgetting to wear anything on his arms. It isn’t weird, he thinks, but Nat gives him a _look_.

“Here,” Bucky says, shrugging her off and handing Steve the hoodie.

“Thanks,” Steve says, pulling it over his head. He’s bigger than Bucky, not too much, but enough that the hoodie is tight on his arms. Bucky absolutely does not stare at him.

They have, for the most part, a relatively successful time studying, other than when Steve goes to move a book and knocks over Bucky’s coffee, resulting in all of them scrambling to move anything important on the table before it fell victim to a black-coffee induced death. Steve bought him another coffee to make up for it, which was very sweet and made the other three give him _looks_ when Steve left the table to go buy it, but through the grace of something, none of them actually said anything. Until right now.

“So,” Nat says when they’re back in Bucky’s car, pulling out of the parking lot. She’s fiddling with the radio dials and she has one of her black boot clad feet on his dash, likely because she knows how much it pisses him off.

“So?” He repeats, trying to focus on the road and not the way he knows she’s staring at him.

“You keep a hoodie in your car,” she says, not a question, because she already knows.

“Yeah,” he says casually.

“Just interesting, that’s all,” she says. The thing about Nat is that she won’t make him talk about it if he doesn’t want to, she just makes it clear that _she_ wants to hear about it if he wants to tell her. It’s very nice and it’s very annoying.

“We slept together,” he says, figuring he might as well jump right in. He glances over at her and, to her credit, Nat doesn’t seem phased in the slightest by the earth-shattering words he’s just said.

“When?” She asks, taking her foot down from the dash.

“At that party Clint and Scott threw.” Nat seems to consider this for a minute before she talks again.

“Who made the first move?”

“Uh, Sam thinks Steve did.”

“Sam is very smart,” Nat says. “Okay, I need you to be straight with me for a second.”

“Aren’t we the wrong people for that?”

“Shut up,” she groans. “Seriously. No bullshit, okay?”

“Okay.”

“How do you feel about Steve?” The question doesn’t catch Bucky entirely off guard, but it does make him want to slam his head against the steering wheel a few times. “No bullshit, Barnes.”

“I think you already know the answer.”

“Tell me anyway.” Bucky sighs.

“I’m not in love with him. But I think I could be.”

“Okay,” Nat says, and Bucky sees her tilt her head from side to side out of his peripheral vision. “How does Steve feel about _you_?”

“Wouldn’t I like to know,” Bucky mutters.

“Have you guys talked about it? The party?”

“We have talked, technically.”

“And how did that go?” Nat asks. Bucky thanks whoever made them meet when they were puny twelve year olds, because she really is endlessly patient with his bullshit.

“He thought you and I were dating.”

“So, not well.”

“Yeah, you could say that,” Bucky nods. “He just said he doesn’t want it to be awkward because we’re friends and then he thought we were dating and I told him we’re both gay and then I was like, well, maybe he’s homophobic because he’s, like, Catholic, right? So I left.” He can feel Nat giving him her very best death stare.

“You’re so stupid,” she says. “First of all, he’s been in bed with you, so I really _don’t_ think you have to worry about him being a raging homophobe.”

“Point taken,” Bucky says.

“Second, he clearly likes you.”

“You’re a mind reader now?”

“It was _his_ idea to try and make sure it isn’t awkward, he’s probably just trying to cover his tracks because he doesn’t know what to do. And, if we’re really being honest, he _is_ Catholic, so he probably can’t come to terms with anything about himself, much less himself possibly being attracted to men.”

“You sound too much like Sam, and I hate you,” Bucky says.

“You’re my best friend, Barnes, and I can tell when something is bothering you. And this is _really_ bothering you.” Bucky sighs and pulls his car into an empty parking space and turns it off, but neither of them make any move to get out.

“I’m not going to bother him about it,” he says. “He said we’re friends, and if that’s all I can ever get, then… I can live with that, I think.”

“You shouldn’t have to. If I’m wrong, if he _isn’t_ interested in you, then fine. Be friends, move on, whatever. But I think you’d be doing a great disservice to yourself, to him, if you don’t just _try_ , at the very least.”

“How can I try? If he doesn’t even know himself, if he’s coming to terms with whatever, how can I try?”

“Just be there for him. You and I both know how hard it is to be questioning yourself and your sexuality. Add onto that that he’s in college, that he’s religious, if he’s trying to figure all this out alone it’ll be worse for him.”

“You’re the smartest person I know,” Bucky says.

“Yeah,” Nat says, grinning. They get out of the car and part ways, and Bucky thinks about everything she said as he walks into his dorm. He knows Nat has a killer intuition, but he can’t help but feel like she’s wrong this time. He’s more focused on his thoughts than he is walking in a straight line, and he’s halfway to the elevator to get to his room when he bumps straight into Steve.

“Oh, sorry, Rogers,” he says, because they’re friends.

“Don’t worry about it,” Steve says, smiling. “Oh! I forgot to give you this back before we left the coffeeshop.” He reaches into his backpack and pulls out the hoodie Bucky had given him.

“Thanks,” Bucky says. “I’ll, uh, put it back in my car. For next time.” Steve grins and nods at him, giving him a friendly goodbye before he heads out the front door of the building. Bucky gets upstairs to his room to find that Sam isn’t back yet, and he’s a little bit grateful. He lays down on his bed, fiddling with the strings on the hoodie.

He really thinks he can just be friends with Steve, They’re both adults, Eventually, they’ll forget all about the party.

Steve will, anyway.

What he hasn’t told Sam or Nat, though they both probably know anyway, is that he can’t forget, he can’t move on from it that fast, he’s been mindlessly hoping since their freshman year that Steve would notice him as more than a friend. He’s really fucked.

He’s done a pretty shit job of hiding the fact that he has a colossal crush on Steve, given the fact that he stares at him and keeps a spare hoodie in his car for him and knows Steve’s order at Waffle House because their group went there so often during their sophomore year. He knows that Steve is an only child and that he lost his dad when he was young and that he’s Catholic, on the football team but doesn’t play. He knows Steve was sick as a kid and still carries an inhaler with him everywhere just in case. It’s all been building up in his head for almost three years – Steve’s birthday is July 4th and he bites his fingernails when he’s nervous, that the only soda he drinks is diet coke and his favorite food is burgers and he’s allergic to dogs but that doesn’t keep him from petting every single one he passes on the street.

And it’s fine. He’s been a walking encyclopedia of Steve Rogers related knowledge for this long, he can keep doing this. He can be friends with Steve. Except now, there’s more. He knows what Steve’s hands feel like on him, that his lips are a little chapped but still soft, that he kisses like he’s been practicing for years and how warm and soft and gentle he is. He can’t forget that. How is he supposed to be just friends with Steve when he knows what it feels like to kiss him?

And so, he’s decided, his new mantra in this situation is that Steve is straight until he comes up to Bucky and directly tells him otherwise. That they were drunk. That it doesn’t have to mean anything, maybe it never will, maybe eventually Bucky will meet someone who replaces Steve’s birthday and favorite food and family history with their own. And it’ll be fine, even if he never forgets what it felt like the very first time he and Steve kissed.

Bucky stays in his bed for a while, moves to do homework and start an essay. He goes out to get dinner with Sam, who doesn’t say anything about the coffeeshop or the hoodie or anything else about Steve, and he’s grateful. He’ll work on forgetting. He’ll work on being friends.

He decides he’ll start the next day, and he sleeps in the hoodie that smells like cologne and Steve. 


	4. four.

Steve leaves football practice in a particularly foul mood, all thanks in the world to his intolerable roommate. Tony had spent the entire time the team was in the locker room making all his usual intolerant-remarks-disguised-as-jokes, which Steve had tried his best to tune out. Then, of course, Tony started talking about Natasha and how he’d heard she was apparently a lesbian but he ‘could fix that’, and Steve couldn’t stop himself from telling Tony off. “You gay, Rogers?” Tony had asked, and everyone laughed, and Steve decided that today wasn’t the day he wanted to be charged with assault for attacking Stark, so he finished getting dressed and left without a word to anyone else, and made a mental note to say something to Tony later.

In retrospect, he thinks, he should have told Tony off before that, and maybe he should have punched him, but he was focused on leaving practice on time to get to the coffeeshop on campus. Now, though, as he’s walking past people on his way there, he feels a distinctive sick feeling in his stomach. Is he that obvious? Can people tell that he’s… something?

Or, worse, did someone else find out about the party?

He trusts Bucky, and he’s sure, absolutely sure, that Bucky wouldn’t tell anyone without unshakeable confidence that they wouldn’t say anything. But he can’t help but wonder. He shakes the thoughts out of his head as he approaches the coffeeshop - another cram session with Bucky, Natasha, and Sam. Steve notices Bucky and Natasha waiting outside as he gets closer, and once he’s almost to them he sees that Bucky is wearing the hoodie he had let Steve borrow last time. It’s a little bit big on him and he has his arms wrapped around himself - it is pretty cold, which he hadn’t noticed in his speedy exit from practice - and Steve’s stomach flips. Bucky looks pretty adorable, he has to admit, and he can feel his face go red when they make eye contact. He can blame that on the cold.

“How are you not freezing?” Bucky asks, rocking on his feet.

“Oh, uh, I’m still pretty heated from practice,” Steve says, which is not entirely a lie. Inside, it’s much warmer, and Bucky takes off the hoodie and hands it to Steve before excusing himself to the bathroom. Natasha orders her coffee, and Steve decides he might as well go ahead and order for himself and Bucky, and they pick a table. Once they’re settled, Natasha takes a long sip of her coffee and clears her throat.

“You know Bucky’s coffee order,” she says. It isn’t a question.

“Uh, yeah,” he says, rubbing his hands on his cup to warm them up. “It’s just black coffee, it’s pretty easy.”

“Do you know mine?” Natasha asks. She doesn’t sound like she’s trying to invade, she just sounds curious. It still makes Steve nervous.

“No,” he says, after racking his brain for a second.

“Black coffee,” she says with a grin. Bucky reappears then, sitting down next to Steve.

“Oh, thanks,” he says when he notices the extra cup on the table. “I’ll pay you back.”

“You don’t have to,” Steve shakes his head. “It can be payment. For the hoodie.”

“Sure,” Bucky says. Steve things Natasha is going to give him one of her _looks_ , but they’re interrupted by Bucky’s phone ringing. It’s Sam, who tells them he’s going to have to skip the study session because Clint has food poisoning and is dying (his words, not Sam’s). They get about an hour in before Natasha ducks out because she has to go to work, telling Bucky she’ll just walk or grab a bus so he doesn’t have to leave too. And so Steve and Bucky end up alone at the coffeeshop, which is fine. Totally. Steve isn’t freaking out at all.

Well, maybe a little.

He shouldn’t be, he knows, because he and Bucky are friends and they are handling the whole thing very well. It’s just that the last time they were alone, properly alone, alone for more than a five minute conversation, well. He can’t think about that right now.

They do actually study, and they get quite a bit done, and then Bucky declares that it’s time to take a break. He gets a refill on his coffee and a brownie that they go halves on and Steve pulls his sketchbook out of his bag because he doesn’t get to devote nearly as much time to art that’s just for him in the middle of football season.

“You’re good,” Bucky says after a few minutes of shockingly comfortable silence. Steve was so engrossed in his drawing that he didn’t even notice Bucky had taken a break from whatever big book he was reading.

“Oh, thanks,” he says. “I don’t get a lot of time to just draw whatever I want in between art classes and football, so this is nice.”

“What do you draw?” Bucky asks. “When you aren’t doing it for class, I mean.”

“People. Sometimes scenery, but mostly people. This is filled with a lot of strangers,” Steve says, lifting his sketchbook slightly.

“Why people? Not to, like, intrude on your drawing or anything. I just think it’s interesting.”

“You aren’t intruding,” Steve assures him. “Um, I don’t know. I guess it’s just what I slip into drawing when I have free time to do it. I drew a lot of people as a kid because when I was sick I couldn’t leave our apartment much, so it was either draw my bedroom a few hundred times or draw the people I saw on tv. I thought the people were more interesting.”

“Very introspective of you,” Bucky says, and Steve laughs. Bucky goes back to his book and Steve flips to a blank page and starts a new sketch. They just sit for a while and Steve has an errant thought that this is a very nice way to spend his days. It scares him a little just how comfortable he is with it.

“We should probably get back to studying,” Bucky says after a while. Steve slides his pencil into his sketchbook to save his place and sets it aside, goes back to his infinitely less exciting textbook. They get in another good hour before the words in Steve’s notebook stop looking like words and they decide to call it a day, packing up their stuff and refilling their coffees before they head out.

“I seriously don’t know how you drink that,” Steve says as the barista hands Bucky his cup.

“It’s delicious,” Bucky hums, taking a sip. Steve makes a face and Bucky laughs so hard his face goes red and Steve can’t help but think that he likes making Bucky laugh. He shakes his head.

“Walk back together?” He says.

“I wish,” Bucky says. “I gotta run my notes to Sam since he’s taken on the role of doting boyfriend today.”

“How sweet of him,” Steve says.

“It’s disgusting,” Bucky says. “I’ve been third wheeling them for over a year. And Natasha is talking to some girl right now – Maria? I can’t remember. I certainly won’t be third wheeling them because Natasha would kill me before she let me tag along with her on a date, but it’s still basically the same thing.”

“Well, if you ever need a break from the third wheeling lifestyle, I’m around. We can always just come back here.”

“I might absolutely have to take you up on that,” Bucky says. “This was nice.”

“It was. Thank you for distracting me from the fact that I have to kill my roommate when I get back to the dorm.” Bucky laughs again and they part ways, and Steve mentally punches himself in the face. _What the fuck was that? ‘If you ever need a break, I’m around’? That totally sounded like a line,_ he thinks to himself. He _wasn’t_ asking Bucky out, because they’re friends, but it certainly sounded like a proposition. Steve feels sick.

He really doesn’t feel up to seeing Tony right now because he’s not sure he can keep himself from actually strangling him, so he pulls out his phone and texts Wanda: _you busy?_ She responds with a simple ‘ _no’_ pretty quickly, so he changes course of where he’s walking to head towards her dorm instead. He loves Wanda – she’s a year below the rest of them but she’s meshed in perfectly from the very first time they met, and Steve has definitely come to see her as a kind of little sister slash best friend. And, besides that, she’s sort of the only person he can talk to about this.

He’s got his mom, of course, and he thought about talking to Sam but he wanted a more objective opinion than from Bucky’s roommate slash best friend. Not that Sam wouldn’t be objective, and he certainly wouldn’t ever tell Bucky that Steve had talked to him about anything, but still.

“Hey, Steve,” Wanda calls out. She’s standing outside the front door of her building, bundled in  a coat and scarf, cheeks flushed from the cold. “My roommate has her boyfriend over so I figured we could go get coffee.”

“Sure,” Steve says, ignoring the potential for himself dying of a caffeine overdose by the end of the day. They walk to the coffeeshop – a different one, closer to Wanda’s dorm – in relative silence. Once they’re inside, coffees ordered, Steve says, “Do you have anyone’s coffee order memorized?” Wanda thinks for a second and doesn’t shoot him any glances that make it seem like she thinks he’s insane, which he appreciates.

“Anna Marie’s,” she says. Steve tries not to throw up. “Why?”

“I, uh,” Steve says, stumbling over the words sitting in his chest. “I have Bucky’s memorized.”

“Oh, babe,” Wanda says, reaching across the table and grabbing his hand.

“I’m not even – that doesn’t mean anything, right? Like, it’s just friendly.”

“Yeah,” Wanda says. “It could just be a friendly thing.”

“Could?”  
“Steve, I’m not – do you want my advice based on some observations I’ve made over the past few weeks?”

“Yeah,” Steve says. “Yeah, why not.”

“I think, I mean – I pay really close attention to people, but I think it’s pretty clear you and Bucky are both interested in each other.”

“I’m not – Wanda, I _can’t_ be gay,” Steve says, lowering his voice slightly. Wanda squeezes his hand. “I can’t be.”

“How much have you thought about this?” She asks lightly.

“I can’t _stop_ thinking about it. Ever since the party, I can’t – I can’t.”

“Party?” Wanda asks.

“Yeah the uh, the party that Scott and Clint threw a while back. Bucky and I kind of, um. Hooked up.” Wanda raises an eyebrow at him, but not in an I-told-you-so kind of way.

“Can I ask you something?” Wanda asks, sipping on her coffee. Steve nods. “Why can’t you?” She doesn’t even have to phrase a full question – Steve knows what she’s asking.

“I just – I’ve never liked any guys before. Ever. Whatever. And I play football and I was raised Catholic and I just… can’t. Be gay. Or bi, whatever. I don’t know.” Wanda smiles at him softly, and takes a deep breath.

“Do you know how I knew I liked girls? In high school, I was never interested in any boys. I never had a boyfriend. I kissed, like, one boy at a party my junior year and I hated it. I had pretty much settled into the idea that I would just never be with anyone because there were no boys I liked and I wasn’t gay. I couldn’t _be_ gay. My parents, my brother, they would never forgive me. No one at school would ever talk to me again. It would be worse than not ever being with someone. My senior year, a new girl transferred to my school. And that was it. I just wanted to be around her all the time, I wanted to talk to her and go everywhere with her and I wanted to do everything, with her, all the time. It was infatuation more than any kind of love, really, but there was no turning back from that moment on. We kissed behind the bleachers the day before we graduated and it was like this switch flipped in my head. Like, oh. Okay. It was all I could think about. It still – I mean, it still took me months to come out to myself, much less to my family or anyone else. But I was so much happier once I knew.”

Steve could faint. He could really, literally faint and fall into the floor of the coffeeshop.

“Wanda, I -,” he begins, then cuts himself off. He feels a little too lightheaded to talk.

“You don’t have to do anything at anyone’s pace but your own,” Wanda says. “And Steve?”

“Yeah?” He says. It’s breathy, but at least he managed to get a word out.

“The most important person you have to come out to is yourself. In the end, anybody who really loves you will stick around no matter what. People who aren’t worth anything won’t. They don’t matter. The most important person involved in this is _you._ ” Steve doesn’t say anything, and they sit in silence for a few minutes while he tries to process everything. Finally, he tears his gaze away from the logo on his coffee cup and looks at her.

“I’m scared,” he says. It sounds like someone else talking. This, he thinks, might be the hardest part to say. That he’s afraid of what might happen if he’s honest.

“I know,” Wanda says. “But you’re strong. You got this.” They finish their drinks in silence – Steve’s is long since cold, and he ends up throwing most of it away. He walks with her back to her dorm and, without really thinking about it, wraps her up in a hug.

“Thank you,” he says quietly.

When he gets back to his dorm, Tony is gone, which he’s endlessly thankful for. He thinks for a long time about what Wanda said, and he can’t quite shake the uncomfortable feeling in his gut. He – he needs space. He needs to be away from anything that will keep him from figuring everything out. And, after a long while, after he thinks and thinks about himself, about _what if I do like guys?,_ about coffee orders and parties and everything else in between, he realizes. For now, he can’t get distracted by anything. He needs a clear head to think.

He needs to stay away from Bucky.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> three chapters in one day i'm killing it!!!!! i hope you guys are liking this so far! chapters 5&6 should be up soon-ish. they're a lot longer and they're starting off the more intense and angsty chapters of this fic so... be ready :)


	5. five.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi! sorry i ghosted this fic for a little while but i'm coming back in full force with two chapters tonight. the last three should be up tomorrow :)
> 
> i haven't proofread this so. sorry. all mistakes are mine bc no betas we die like men

It’s not, at first, something Bucky notices beyond a reasonable amount. Well, maybe a little, but not on purpose. But after two years of resigning himself to admiring Steve from afar, he doesn’t think it’s weird that he tends to be tuned in to Steve when they’re in a group.

“Steve not coming today?” He asks Wanda as casually as he can. They’re getting lunch – himself, Wanda, Steve, Nat, and Sam – and he’s not worried, per se. But Steve had been there when they made the plans and it’s not really like him to ditch plans with no prior warning.

“I haven’t seen him,” she says, “but when I called him this morning he said he had a migraine. He’s been getting them a lot recently but he said he gets them a lot this time of year and not to worry about it, so.” Bucky nods. He knows, of course, that Steve had health problems as a kid, and he’s sure it can’t be easy to get over all that. He shrugs it off as a one-time thing and he orders his food and has a good time. He doesn’t overly focus on Steve’s absence, which he marks down in his head as progress towards them being just friends. Nat does point out later that the food Bucky ordered is probably what Steve would have ordered, but he shrugs her off. That’s a bit of a reach, even for her.

They meet up at the coffeeshop on campus a week later for a study session. Bucky gets there last, surprising absolutely no one, and sits down next to Sam once he has his coffee.

“No Steve today?” Sam asks no one in particular. Wanda shakes her head, curls bouncing around, but offers no explanation. Bucky tries not to think about it too much, passes it off in his head as the migraines Wanda had mentioned last time. It does mean he essentially studies alone, since Wanda, Sam, and Clint are all working on a group project for a different course. He texts Steve halfway through his second coffee – _do you want my notes for the test_ – short and to the point. Steve sends back a thumbs up emoji and nothing else 13 minutes later. Not that Bucky is counting.

Sam is glancing at him throughout most of the time they’re studying, likely because Bucky is looking at his phone more often than usual. He spends a few minutes thinking of something believable he could tell Sam besides _yeah, I’m pretty sure Steve is ignoring me, but I’m not sure and it’s no biggie absolutely not I haven’t been thinking about it at all,_ and he comes up with, well. Absolutely nothing, because Sam can see through any lie he tells.

He spreads his notes across the table after they’ve cleared out so he can get the best possible pictures of his chicken scratch handwriting, then unceremoniously shoves all his papers into his backpack and looks up to see Sam waiting for him by the door.

“What?” Bucky asks when he crosses the store – Sam has a look on his face. A _look_. Bucky doesn’t like it at all.

“Nothing,” Sam says. “Nothing at all.” Bucky shakes his head. He sends all the pictures to Steve and, despite nothing about the text being risky, turns off his phone.

“Don’t be weird,” Bucky says.

“I’m not being weird.”

“You’re being all… I don’t know. Weird. Acting like you know something.” Sam shrugs, and Bucky rolls his eyes. Back at their dorm, Bucky sets about doing everything he needed to do earlier in the week like cleaning his side of the room and doing his laundry in between bouts of studying for his test. Somewhere around half past nine he heads down to get his last load of clothes from the dryer and bumps into someone on their way out of the laundry room.

Steve.

Of course. Obviously. Who else?

“Oh, hey,” Bucky says. “Sorry.”

“No, you’re good. I wasn’t really paying attention,” Steve says. He pushes his hand through his hair and looks around, almost like he’s scared. Nervous, maybe, Bucky thinks. He doesn’t know why.

“I sent you, uh, my notes for the test tomorrow,” Bucky reminds him, more to keep from falling into an awkward silence than anything else.

“Oh, thanks. I haven’t really been looking at my phone. See you then?” Bucky nods and Steve gives him some kind of half-smile before heading off in the other direction. He shakes his head and focuses on folding his clothes to keep his mind off of the mildly awkward conversation he was just a part of, but once he gets back to the room he can’t help himself.

“Do you think Steve has been acting weird?” He asks Sam, trying to sound as nonchalant as possible.

“Uh, not really,” Sam shrugs. “Why?”

“Just, y’know, he wasn’t at the coffeeshop today and he doesn’t usually just bail on stuff like that.”

“Wanda said he’d been sick. Migraines or whatever. Maybe it’s that.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Bucky says. He’s quiet for a minute before breaking the silence with, “I ran into him in the hallway.”

“Okay.”

“Not, like, physically ran into him – well, yeah, kind of – but,”

“Does this run-on sentence have a point?” Sam asks in his cut-to-the-chase voice.

“He just seemed nervous.”

“Maybe you make him nervous.”

“What?” Bucky asks.

“I’m just saying, you guys kind of have a weird history.”

“Not – not that weird,” Bucky insists. “Do you think he’s skipping out on stuff like studying because of me?”

“That’s not what I meant,” Sam says. Bucky knows that. Maybe.

“Yeah,” Bucky says, “I’m just worried about him. Just like, normal worried. Not. Extra worried. Or whatever.”

“Yeah,” Sam nods. Bucky can tell he doesn’t believe him, but he doesn’t push it. “Just text him. It’s not gonna mean anything if you just ask him if he’s doing alright.” Bucky nods. He knows Sam is right, and he figures it won’t hurt just to check in. He waits for his phone to turn on and then goes to his texts with Steve – the most recent is still the pictures he had sent just earlier that day. Underneath them, in that light grey color that makes Bucky sick, the notification that they were read, 7:19 P.M. Bucky turns his phone back off.

The next day, despite the internal war going on his body about staying in bed, Bucky gets up, gets dressed, and goes to class. He knows he can’t miss the test they’re having even if it means enduring painfully awkward conversation with Steve – they sit right next to each other, have since the beginning of the semester. It’s fine, Bucky tells himself, completely fine.

Steve is already in his seat when Bucky makes his way in. He gives him a courteous nod when he sits down, but says nothing. Bucky shakes it off.

Their professor dismisses class early, almost immediately after everyone has finished, and Steve wastes no time getting out of the classroom. Bucky, well. He tries to shake it off. He tries as best he can during the rest of his classes to think about anything _but_ Steve, and it goes just about as well as he thought it would. That is, not at all. When he gets back to the dorm after his final class, Sam is already there, and he lets out a low whistle when he sees Bucky.

“You look rough,” he says.

“I think Steve is avoiding me,” Bucky says bluntly, flopping down on his bed. He can’t see Sam, but he assumes that he rolls his eyes. “Don’t do that.”

“You can’t even see me, what the fuck,” Sam says.

“I know you well enough to know that you are rolling your eyes at my, admittedly pathetic, life. It’s very rude and I don’t appreciate it at all. Asshole.”

“Quit being a big baby,” is Sam’s response. Bucky sits up slightly and sticks his tongue out. “Very mature. You’re a total catch, no idea why Steve wouldn’t be into all that.”

“Ugh,” Bucky groans, and flops back down.

“Okay. First of all, my advice is just to go straight to him and talk about it -,”

“I -,”

“Shut up. Don’t tell me you have because I know you and I know about your weird deflection-as-self-defense thing you do when you need to talk about serious stuff.” Bucky gives him the finger. “Yeah, exactly. Anyway. Since you are apparently physically incapable of talking to him directly – why do you think he’s avoiding you.”

“You’re mean,” Bucky says, moving to sit criss-cross on his bed. “I don’t like you.”

“You have literally ten seconds to start talking about this before I formally redact all advice-giving for the foreseeable future.”

“Well, first he skips all those study groups. I know Wanda said he was sick, but I don’t think that’s true. And then there was the weird thing in the hallway. And today we had our test, right, and we’ve sat next to each other in that class since the beginning of the semester. He didn’t say anything to me, not even like, hi, he just waved, and then he left as soon as the test was over.” Sam has a look on his face like Bucky is being overdramatic and he’s about to tell him exactly that, so Bucky keeps going. “I know it doesn’t sound like much and I know it sounds like I’m sad and pathetic and overdramatic and everything even though we agreed to be friends despite what happened, but. I don’t know.”

“Bucky,” Sam says after a long pause. “You’re torturing yourself. If he is avoiding you, for whatever reason, and neither of you are going to bring it up, you have to stop. Stop trying to make such an effort if he isn’t doing the same, and stop being so hung up on him.”

“You think I need to move on,” Bucky says. It isn’t a question.

“Yeah,” Sam nods. “It’s either go to him and figure this mess out, or move on.”

Bucky knows Sam is right, and not just because Sam is always right. He knows the best thing to do is – well, he _knows_ he should talk to Steve, but he doesn’t even know how. He thinks back to his conversation with Nat. If Steve is trying to figure himself out, Bucky doesn’t know how he would possibly bring anything up without sounding like an asshole. Which leads him to option two: move on.

Bucky’s parents, and Nat, and Sam, and anyone who has known him for more than five minutes, would say that he’s stubborn. Bucky prefers the term inconveniently determined, but that doesn’t really matter. He grabs his phone from his backpack and opens his texts with Wanda and sends a short one: _are you free tomorrow?_

-

“I want it to go on record that I am not asking you to betray Steve’s trust in any way,” Bucky says as soon as he and Wanda sit down on one of the benches outside her dorm.

“Not a promising start,” she says, “but go on.”

“Okay. And, also on the record-,”

“I’m not fucking recording you, Bucky.”

“Whatever. I just want to make sure you know that you don’t have to tell me anything you may or may not know.” Wanda raises an eyebrow. “Okay. I think Steve has been avoiding me – you don’t have to tell me if he is – and I can’t ask Sam to do this for me because he might start hitting me with sticks or something.”

“Do what for you?” Wanda asks. She sounds, understandably, apprehensive.

“I just want something that feels like solid proof that he’s avoiding me, so I need someone to set up one last study session for Fury’s class – which is genuinely going to kill me, by the way – and it needs to be you.”

“Why me?” Wanda asks.

“Nat won’t do it, Sam will hit me with aforementioned sticks, I don’t trust Clint or Scott to not fuck it up,” Bucky says, rattling the list off easily.

“Fair enough. How will this help you?”

“I’ll put in the group chat that I can’t make it whatever day it happens. All I need you to do is tell me whether or not Steve shows up. See? Not betraying his trust at all.” Wanda gives him an are-you-fucking-sure-about-that look and sighs,

“I’ll do it. But _I_ want it on record that I do not feel good about this and if Steve or anyone else finds out, this was all your idea.”

“Deal,” Bucky says. Wanda shakes her head, curls bouncing, and pulls out her phone. Bucky feels his buzz a second later and opens the message – _hey guys! want to do one last study sesh for fury’s class?? i was thinking sunday_ – and smiles. “Very convincing.”

“Thank you,” Wanda says, tucking her phone back into her pocket.

“Thank _you_ ,” Bucky says. “Seriously. I know this probably seems, well, kind of dramatic. But.”

“Just a little,” Wanda smiles. “Oh, and just know you owe me about a hundred favors now.” Bucky laughs,

“That’s fair.”

“Oh, and one more thing,” Wanda says, looking Bucky dead in the eye. “I don’t really know what’s going on with you and Steve, and I’d like to keep it that way, but don’t stop including yourself in the group just because he hasn’t talked to you in a while, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Bucky almost whispers.

“Good. Okay, I’m cashing in one of the favors now. You have to go with me and everyone else to the football game on Saturday. Steve is playing and we’re going to support him.”

“Steve doesn’t play,” Bucky interjects.

“Technically, that’s true. But the quarterback got hurt and Steve is going in for him.”

“Do I have to?” Bucky asks, and he knows she’ll say yes, but he figures he might as well try to get out of it.

“Yes! We’re all going to be supportive. Tell Nat to come too.”

“Fine,” Bucky says, “but I’m not going to have fun.”

-

Bucky is, contrary to his word, kind of having fun, even if his ass hurts from sitting on the bleachers and the wind is making him cold. He has on a hoodie – if it’s the same one he lets Steve borrow, well, that isn’t important – and has his arms wrapped completely around himself, but he’s still shaking. To his left, Nat seems to be perfectly content, and to his right, Sam is huddled under a blanket with Clint. He scowls and tries to wrap his arms around himself even tighter.

“Baby,” Nat says when she looks over at him.

“I know that your weird alien biology prevents you from partaking in normal human experiences, but some of us are real people and we get cold. Please don’t be rude,” Bucky says.

“Big baby,” Nat says this time, smirking. From behind him, Wanda nudges Bucky in the back with her knee.

“Stop complaining,” she says, “we’re here to support Steve.”

“I can do both, I’m good at multitasking.”

Truthfully, Bucky hasn’t really been watching much of the game. He doesn’t understand football and mostly just cheers when the people around him do. Scott tried to explain some of Steve’s plays to him early in the game, but gave up pretty quickly when Bucky told him he was so confused his head might explode. He glances at the scoreboard and sees they’re behind by more than a few points, and he figures he doesn’t really need to know anything else. He grasps the basics enough to know that right before the timer hits zero on the second quarter, Steve throws the ball and someone he doesn’t know catches it and makes a touchdown. It isn’t enough to put them ahead, but he still cheers on account of he’s being a supportive friend and everyone around him is cheering, too.

They’re close enough to the front of the bleachers that they can all shout Steve’s name loud enough that he hears them when he’s walking down the sidelines. They all wave and Bucky shoots him a thumbs up, and he gives one back even if a bit hesitantly, which Bucky takes as a good-ish sign.

“Football games are so fucking long,” Bucky says at the beginning of the third quarter. “Why are they so long?”

“You didn’t have to come,” Sam says.

“Yes he did,” Wanda says at the same time Bucky says “yes I did”. Sam and Nat give them weird looks, and Bucky turns around and sticks his tongue out at Wanda. She grins back at him.

The third and fourth quarters, Bucky admits, end up being pretty exciting. Scott says that Steve makes some really good plays and Bucky takes his word for it but doesn’t ask for the details.

They win the game – their first win of the season – and the crowd starts a chant of Steve’s name. Bucky knows if he could see Steve up close right now, he would be covering his face in embarrassment, but he joins in anyway because, hey. They won.

On their way out of the stadium, Bucky catches Wanda before she leaves with Anna Marie.

“Text me the days of the home games?” Bucky asks, and Wanda grins at him.

“Sure thing.”

-

The next morning, he remembers his plan, and he almost doesn’t want to go through with it. He does anyway. _Sorry guys, I can’t make it today,_ and nothing more, trying to sound as vague and convincing as possible so Sam doesn’t question it. He still does, of course.

“What do you have to do today?” Sam asks before he leaves for Clint’s apartment.

“I need to catch up on some homework and get some laundry and stuff done,” Bucky says, trying to sound casual. Sam looks like he wants to say something about it, but he doesn’t.

“Alright. I’ll be back later.”

Bucky does actually have laundry to do, and he studies for Fury’s class by himself in between that and getting sucked into watching videos on YouTube. On his way from his room to the vending machine downstairs, he checks his phone, which he had put on silent so he wouldn’t think about it too much.

One unread text, from Wanda: _he came._

Bucky turns his phone off and goes back upstairs. He doesn’t think about it for ten minutes – a solid achievement – while he keeps going through his notes, but he closes his books and leans back in his chair after he reads the same sentence for the eighth time. Not that he’s counting.

So. He was right. Steve is avoiding him. _So what,_ he thinks, _not a big deal,_ except it is a big deal. No matter how much his brain wants to be tough and chill and not care about anyone else’s feelings towards him, he does. A lot. So, yeah. A big deal. Huge deal. Monstrous, incredible, the-guy-I’ve-been-sort-of-in-love-with-for-a-while, big deal. Bucky closes his eyes and rubs his hands over his face. He doesn’t want to care. He doesn’t want to be _that_ person, the one who comes off as clingy because he does care. Cares so much. Too much, maybe. Too much, so someone doesn’t want it anymore, and they stop talking to him. It’s happened before. He almost expects it with anyone who isn’t Sam or Natasha.

The biggest problem, of course, is that he can’t just stop caring about Steve. Not about anyone, really, but not Steve. He doesn’t know exactly how he feels about Steve – he’s hesitant to call it love, but it’s something. Something too big for words. It sits in his chest and it burns, sparks like a campfire. Warm, comforting. Too hot if he sits too close. Which, for all intents and purposes, he has.

He moves from his desk chair to his bed, turning off the lamp on his end table and curling his entire body under his blankets, and he thinks. First: what would Nat say? One, she would tell him the very first thing he needs to do is talk to Steve, even if he doesn’t want to. Confront him about everything. Then she would tell him to get his shit together and stop moping and move on. She would also offer to kill Steve for him, just as a friendly gesture. Bucky shakes his head and goes onto number two: what would Sam say? Bucky knows he would tell him again that he’s torturing himself, that he owes it to himself to move on, and that he’ll kick his ass if he needs to. Bucky’s, not Steve’s.

He’s about to really dig into his own mind, heart, whatever and figure out what to do – or, at least, think about doing it – when the door to his room opens with a click.

“What the fuck,” Sam says. He flips on the overhead light and Bucky winces even though he’s covered up.

“Please don’t bother me, I’m trying to mope in peace,” he says, muffled by his blankets. They get yanked off of him almost immediately after, and he scowls at Sam. “Asshole.”

“Steve came with Wanda today. I don’t want to get involved in whatever the hell is going on and I absolutely don’t want to know if you planned something and that’s why you weren’t there -,”

“Pretty on the nose guess,” Bucky says.

“- but he was there,” Sam continues as if Bucky never spoke. “So if that’s enough for you to stop pity-partying all the time and move on I thought you should know.”

“I’m not pity-partying,” Bucky protests. Sam makes a noise that is eerily similar to those cheap party blower things. “What the fuck.”

“At the risk of sounding like a broken record, you’re torturing yourself. I know I rag on you all the time because it’s fun and you make it so damn easy, but you’re my best friend. I hate seeing you like this.”

“I’ll be okay,” Bucky says. Sam doesn’t look convinced. “I’m working on it.”

“Good,” Sam nods, “because we decided that after we all pass Fury’s insane midterms that we’re doing pizza at Clint and Scott’s place to celebrate. All of us.”

“Wh- okay, first of all, Clint and Anna Marie and Nat aren’t even in that class.”

“Didn’t seem to matter much today.” Sam gives Bucky a look.

“All of us?” Bucky asks, voice quieter than before.

“All of us,” Sam says again. “Look, you guys are going to run into each other at some point even if you aren’t talking. Might as well get any awkwardness out of the way now.”

“Not as easy as it sounds,” Bucky sighs. “It’s like the party all over again but _worse_ because now we just aren’t talking at all.”

“And because last time at least you got to sleep with him?” Sam teases.

“Fuck you,” Bucky says, but he cracks a grin. “When is this pizza celebration?”

“This week, the day after the final. We’re all gonna go to the game on Saturday, too, but I didn’t know if you would want to considering you were miserable last time.”

“I wasn’t… entirely miserable.” Sam raises his eyebrows. “Just mostly. I’ll- yeah, I’ll come for pizza.”

“Good,” Sam says. “Because Nat bet me ten dollars I couldn’t convince you to come.” Bucky throws a pillow at him.

“Assholes. Bet on my exhausting personal life, absolutely hilarious,” he says, smiling.

“Yeah. It really is.”

-

The midterm well and truly kicks Bucky’s ass. He considers himself a pretty good student, and makes pretty good grades, but he thinks the only way he’ll make anything decent on that is if Fury gets absolutely shitfaced to grade it.

“I’m not really religious, but dear God, if you give me an A on that test I might consider it,” Scott says as they leave the classroom. Bucky has to agree. Despite the very likely impending awkwardness, he really needs this pizza night.

 

“I’m gonna go meet Anna Marie, we’ll be by a little later,” Wanda says, walking off a little once they’re outside. “Don’t eat all the pizza, boys.”

“Okay,” Clint says. “Me and Sam are gonna go get the pizza, we’ll be back to the apartment soon. Everybody better be there or you aren’t invited to the Halloween party.” They take off in the other direction, and then Scott speaks up.

“I’m going by Hope’s dorm for a few, but if you guys want to go ahead and go to the apartment that’s totally cool. Here,” he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a key, handing it to Steve, “I should be there soon.”

Bucky briefly considers stepping into traffic. He’s fine, this is fine. Walking with the guy he likes who is unofficially-officially avoiding him to an apartment where they’ll be alone is completely fine. One hundred percent. He thinks he might throw up, though.

They walk beside each other, almost too close, and neither of them says anything. Steve’s hand accidentally brushes Bucky’s and he says something that almost sounds like the word sorry, but Bucky honestly can’t tell. He wouldn’t be surprised if his brain made it up.

“Is it cool with you if we stop at the coffee place?” Steve asks, coming to a stop when they’re about halfway to the apartment. Bucky almost passes out. It’s the first time Steve has said more than a few words to him since their run-in in the hallway, and for a second he thinks he imagined it and has officially passed from being dramatic about the whole thing to being pathetic. He glances at Steve, though, who raises his eyebrows as if to ask the question again.

“Oh, yeah, sure,” Bucky says hurriedly. “Um, I’ll just wait out here.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Bucky says, shaking his head with too much vigor and sending his hair flying into his face. Steve looks like he wants to ask something – if Bucky needs immediate medical assistance, probably – but he doesn’t, just nods before going inside.

If there weren’t people around, Bucky would smack himself. He’s a generally logical and normal person, he thinks, he should be able to talk to Steve without immediately going to either a horribly awkward conversation or, well. Whatever _this_ is.

He shakes his head again. All he needs to do is make some kind of small talk so this isn’t so weird. Part of him wishes Steve would start a conversation as some kind of non-apology for ghosting him with no explanation, but he isn’t counting on it.

Steve comes out of the building a moment later, coffee in each hand. “Here,” he says, handing one to Bucky. “Black, no sugar. Disgusting.” The words sound a little forced, but hey, Bucky thinks. It’s something.

“It’s actually delicious,” Bucky says as they continue their walk, trying to sound as casual as possible. “Thanks. But you didn’t have to get me anything.”

“Repayment,” Steve says. Bucky furrows his brows, then remembers.

“You don’t need to ‘repay’ me for the hoodie thing,” he says, air quoting the best he can while holding his coffee. “Seriously.”

“I – yeah. It’s not, um. I know,” Steve stutters, and the air between them goes right back to awkward from almost-comfortable.

“Did you know Clint and Scott were having a Halloween party?” Bucky asks after a minute. He’s determined to make this not weird. He hears a voice in his head that sounds annoyingly like Sam saying something about closure and moving on and he pushes it back to wherever it came from.

“Oh, yeah,” Steve nods. “They mentioned it when we were studying on Sunday. Uh, it’s the Friday before the homecoming game, I think. Clint said something about turning us away at the door if we don’t dress up.” Bucky laughs.

“Of course he did. God, that probably means I can’t repeat my costume from last year, either.”

“Zombie, right?” Steve says. Bucky looks over at him, surprised, and Steve lowers his coffee cup from his mouth. “What?”

“You remember my shitty zombie costume?” He asks, half touched and half mortified because, really, it was horrible.

“Obviously. Pretty cu-,” he cuts himself off, then continues, “best zombie costume I’d ever seen, I think.” Bucky ignores whatever he was going to say and lets out a loud laugh.

“Flattery will get you everywhere, but c’mon. It was awful. I did all the makeup myself – Nat still has pictures of me in the process.”

“Oh, I’d kill to see those,” Steve laughs. The conversation falls off naturally, which Bucky is both a little surprised by and fine with. He feels pretty okay – they actually had a real, normal conversation, and it wasn’t horrible. Progress, he thinks, but even that doesn’t keep that annoying feeling inside of him from showing up when they get to the apartment. They don’t talk at all once they’re inside, but Bucky takes up the comfy corner of the couch and Steve doesn’t sit all the way across the room, which he thinks is good. It’s the little victories.

Scott comes in less than five minutes later, with both Hope and Nat behind him, and Clint and Sam follow soon after.

“Wanda and Anna Marie bailed on us for date night,” Clint announces, dropping the pizza boxes on the table with no grace whatsoever, “so, more for us!”

“More for _you_ , you mean,” Sam says, sitting down on Bucky’s right side. “Don’t act like you aren’t about to take down a pizza and a half.”

“It’s endearing,” Clint says. He grabs the pizza box on the top of the stack and sits next to Sam, opening it across their laps. “You love me.”

“It’s exhausting,” Sam corrects. “And yeah, unfortunately.”

Bucky splits the meat pizza with Nat, listening to the conversation more than talking. They plan out more of the Halloween party – Clint says that costumes _are_ required and stares directly at Bucky when he says costume repeaters will be barred from entering. He catches Steve’s eye at that and they both laugh to themselves, and it’s nice. Sam tells Clint that they’re breaking up if he isn’t allowed to be in charge of the music and Scott tells them all that they’re free to stay the night after the party if they want to. Bucky doesn’t die on the spot at the thought of spending the night there after a party again, but he certainly feels like he might. 

After a while – and after all the pizza is gone – they decide to call it a night. Sam ends up staying there, so, for the second time that day, Bucky ends up walking alone with Steve. It isn’t as lively as the first, no talk of parties or costumes, and it isn’t really _awkward_ , per se. It’s more like walking around with someone you’re mad at or aren’t talking to for whatever reason which, Bucky thinks, isn’t really too far off. They’ve almost made it back to the dorms when Steve says,

“Are you coming to the next game?”

It sounds so robotic that Bucky guesses he’s been thinking about saying it for most of the walk. His stomach churns – maybe, he thinks, Steve hates this too. But then why was he avoiding him to start with?

“Um, maybe,” Bucky says honestly. “I’m not really into football, but I had fun at the last one. You played well, I think. That’s what Scott said anyway.” Steve laughs, but it’s hollow.

“You should come.”

“Yeah,” Bucky nods. “I might. If everybody else is going.” They fall into silence again, and stay that way for the rest of their walk. Steve lives on the floor above him, so he sort of walks Bucky home. “Uh, see you around?”

“Yeah.” Steve breathes. He has a look on his face that Bucky can’t quite place, like he’s trying to decide something, then he shakes his head a little and takes a step back. “See you around.”

-

The next day, in the class they have together, Steve isn’t there. Or, that’s what Bucky thinks at first. And then there’s the very distinct sound of Steve’s laugh. Bucky turns around to see him sitting a few rows back, talking to some people he doesn’t really know. He catches Steve’s eye and Steve gives him a little wave. Bucky turns back around, and he’s out of his seat and out of class as soon as their professor dismisses them.

As he walks back to his dorm he tries to think straight, but his head is spinning. First it seems like Steve wants to be friends, then he’s avoiding to him, barely speaking to him in class and skipping out on group stuff any time Bucky is there. And then, just for a minute, when they walked to Clint and Scott’s apartment, it was like none of it had ever even happened. They were just their normal selves, and now Steve won’t even sit next to him. It’s all… a lot. It makes Bucky feel like he’s going crazy.

And so, finally, he decides. Sam was right, of course, all he’s doing by thinking about it so much is torturing himself. It’s exhausting. So, he decides. He’s moving on, hopefully, the best that he can.

-

He doesn’t go to the game, and Sam texts him halfway through and tells him that something about Steve is off. Bucky texts back and tells him he doesn’t know why – they haven’t talked in a few days.

Wanda texts him later, after the game, and tells him they lost.

-

“What are you going as for Clint and Scott’s party?” Bucky asks Nat the Wednesday before. They’re out for dinner – a tradition they’ve had since high school. She rolls her eyes.

“Of course you’re trying to figure out a costume two days beforehand,” she says. “I’m doing a witch.”

“Isn’t that what you did last year?”

“Like they would kick me out,” she shrugs. “You, on the other hand.”

“Before you even say it, we do not need to relive the zombie, please do not bring out the pictures.”

“Fine,” Nat hums. “Do you have any ideas at all?”

“No,” Bucky groans, laying his head back against the booth. “And it either needs to come straight from my closet or be cheap.”

“Tough call,” Nat says, taking a bite of her food. “But I do have one idea, if you’re up for some thrift shopping after this.”

“Do I have a choice?”

-

Bucky looks himself up and down in the full length mirror in Nat’s dorm, then nods his head. “Not bad.” It hadn’t taken much to turn him into Flynn Rider – some thrifted clothes and a lot of convincing from Natasha to let her straighten his hair, mostly.

“Obviously,” Nat says. She jumps down from the bathroom counter where she was sitting to do her makeup. “It was my idea. Ready?” He nods and they head out downstairs to make their way to Wanda’s dorm, where they’re meeting up with her and Anna Marie.

“I still don’t know why costumes are required,” Bucky says, pushing his hair out of his face.

“Oh, please, it’s Scott and Clint. You know they’re going to have a costume contest.” Bucky groans and crosses his arms over his chest. “Any word on what Clint and Sam picked for their costumes?”

“Ugh, no. Sam wouldn’t tell me anything other than they’re doing a couples costume this year.” Nat shakes her head like she doesn’t even want to know, and then she looks at Bucky. “What?”

“Act as casual as you want, Barnes, I know you aren’t excited about this.”

“Why wouldn’t I be?” He asks. Nat raises an eyebrow. “I’m fine. We aren’t talking. I probably won’t even see him.”

“Hm, whatever you say. Just don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

“That’s not a very long list,” he says, and she reaches over and punches him on the arm. When they get up to Wanda’s dorm, she and Anna Marie are already waiting outside, dressed as Daphne and Velma. It’s cute, Bucky has to admit. Natasha and Anna Marie start talking about something as they walk to their destination, and Wanda swings around to walk on the other side of Bucky.

“Steve is gonna be there,” she says quietly. “I just thought you’d want to know. He’s been kind of – weird, I guess, the last week or so, and I didn’t think he was even going to come.”

“Sam said he was ‘off’ at the game, whatever that means. We haven’t talked much. At all.”

“He asked me if you were going to be at the party,” she says. Bucky nods in acknowledgement.

“And he’s still gonna be there? Wow,” he says. “Sorry, I know that makes me sound like an ass, but.”

“Just, listen, if you get the chance to talk to him tonight, I think you should. He hasn’t really talked to me about – I don’t know. Whatever is going on. But I get the feeling he wants to talk to you.”

“I’ll think about it,” Bucky sighs. He’s been trying the best he can to avoid thinking about any of this at all, to move on or something like it, actually, but he doesn’t want to get into that with Wanda, or anyone else, for that matter.

Clint and Scott are known to go all out for parties, and Halloween is no exception. Bucky looks around as they walk up and sees decorations they’ve put out everywhere – fake spiderwebs and crime scene tape covering the front door. It’s pretty impressive, he has to admit.

They split up almost immediately once they’re inside, and on his search around the apartment for Sam he takes in the atmosphere and does some light costume judging. He spots Scott almost immediately, dancing with Hope – her hair is pink and Scott’s is green and they have little crowns on, and Bucky thinks they could almost beat out Wanda and Anna Marie for cutest costume. And then.

“Oh my fucking god,” Bucky says when Sam walks up to him, an obviously already drunk Clint trailing behind. They’re wearing striped sweaters and jeans and white sneakers, and it looks like Clint used black spray-in dye on his hair. “Oh my _god_.”

“Shut up,” Sam says. Clint leans into his shoulder and looks at Bucky.

“We’re Bert and Ernie,” he slurs, dragging out the E. “I wanted to get the masks but Sam is mean and wouldn’t let me.”

“You’ll thank me later,” Sam yells over the music as Clint wanders off. “Tomorrow when he isn’t absolutely smashed, I’m going to kill him for this.”

“Well, I think you look adorable!” Bucky singsongs.

“Die,” Sam says. He looks Bucky up and down and then glares at him. “You did not pick out this costume.”

“No,” Bucky says. “But it isn’t a zombie, and that’s all that matters. Not that Clint is thinking clearly enough to have been able to turn me away at the door.”

“Yeah, I should probably go find him and make sure he doesn’t kill himself,” Sam says, glancing around and then looking back at Bucky. “Steve is here, by the way.” He nods his head in the direction of the kitchen.

“Wanda said he might be.”

“He seems to be sticking to punch,” Sam adds, and gives Bucky one of his looks.

“Interesting information, thank you for sharing.” Bucky says sarcastically. Sam rolls his eyes.

“Just don’t do anything I wouldn’t,” he says, then goes off in the direction of his drunk boyfriend.

“Stop saying the same things as Nat,” Bucky yells after him. He walks around, talks to a few people he knows, spends a few minutes talking to Scott and Hope – who, he finally figures out, are actually dating – and then asks him where they have the punch because it’s too hot and he’s thirsty and has decided to avoid anything that could get him drunk tonight. Scott tells him  it’s in the kitchen and Bucky starts that way, letting out a deep breath and hoping it’s been long enough since he talked to Sam that there’s nobody in there. And, at first, the coast is clear. It’s empty and he pours himself a cup and leans back against the fridge to cool off and closes his eyes. The peace doesn’t last too long before he hears footsteps coming that way, and he moves so he doesn’t look weird to some stranger.

Except, when he opens his eyes, Steve is looking directly at him. Because of course he is.

_“I gotta say,” Steve says. “You look like you’d rather be dead than be at this party right now.”_

_“Not really my scene,” Bucky shrugs._

_“Yeah? Mine either,” Steve says, and Bucky does a double take._

_“Seriously?”_

_“Why so surprised?” Steve asks, taking a sip of his drink._

_“I dunno,” Bucky says. “Just… seems like you’d like it.”_

_“What makes you think so?”_

_“Pickin’ my brain your new favorite hobby, Rogers?” Steve grins._

_“Maybe so,” he says, looking around. “You’re probably the most interesting person at this party by a landslide, so.”_

_“I’m flattered. Anyway, it just seems like something you’d be into. You play football, you’re popular, y’know.”_

_“I’m on the team, I don’t really play,” Steve says. “But, no, not exactly my scene.”_

_“And here I thought we were friends,” Bucky says, feigning shock. “You aren’t a frat-boy type after all. You’ve been holding out on me.”_

_“I’m full of surprises.”_

Bucky shakes his head. Steve is dressed as Clark Kent and is sort of stalled at the doorway to the kitchen, looking at him, looking dumfounded, almost. Bucky can feel his face getting redder. He gives him a kind of half smile and then breaks eye contact and walks out of the kitchen and all the way across the apartment so he’s leaning against a wall in the living room. He’s positioned just enough that he’s behind some people dancing and he’s pretty sure that when Steve walks out of the kitchen, he can’t see him. He nurses his drink and watches as Steve looks around for a minute and then someone Bucky doesn’t know comes up to him and starts talking. Steve gives into whatever conversation they’re having for a few minutes, and Bucky thinks he can probably make his break now and go find Sam or Nat or someone, but then he looks back over and Steve is staring straight at him. Bucky pretends like he hasn’t been staring and he watches as Steve glances at him every once in a while between talking to – whoever it is, Bucky doesn’t really care. And then the guy must see something better to do, because he walks away, and Steve starts towards Bucky.

He makes it across the room in an unfairly short amount of time, Bucky thinks, and then he’s in front of him. Bucky is still standing with his back against the wall and he doesn’t really feel cornered or anything like that, but he feels… he doesn’t really know. He doesn’t like it. Steve is _staring_ at him. Bucky takes a sip of his drink and looks away, but he knows his face is red and it suddenly feels fifteen degrees hotter than it did before.

“Hi,” Steve says after a second. Kind of anticlimactic, Bucky thinks in passing, but he’s distracted because Jesus, was Steve’s voice always so low? Has he never noticed or has he just not talked to him in long enough that he forgot?

“Hi,” Bucky says back.

“How have you b-,” Steve starts, but Bucky abruptly decides that, no, no small talk and no forced conversations, so he cuts him off.

“Why have you been avoiding me?” He says, musters up all the courage inside of him to finally ask that. Steve looks… Bucky doesn’t really know. A little caught off guard, definitely. A little sad.

“Do you wanna go somewhere more private?” Steve asks. A much more simple question in theory than in practice. The rational half of his brain says no, absolutely not, not until you explain yourself. The _other_ half says it wouldn’t be the worst idea in the world to just start stripping right now. If this was a classic comedy, he would have angel-Bucky on one shoulder and devil-Bucky on the other. In truth, he knows, Steve is probably just going to tell him why they shouldn’t keep up their façade of being friends and why, in fact, they should never speak again, since they’ve already gotten a pretty good head start on that.

He throws the rest of his drink back.

“Sure.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hope u enjoyed! please leave a comment or find me @ teamcaps on tumblr to make my day!!


	6. six.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this jumps directly off of chapter 5. enjoy!
> 
> (all mistakes are mine, no betas, we die like men)

Steve is pretty sure that, in a hilarious and highly unappreciated turn of events, they’re in Clint’s room. He bases this on being eighty five percent sure that’s the same bedspread he just saw in passing one day and not the one that, well.

See, the thing is, this had seemed like an okay plan when he had found out that Bucky was going to be at the party. He figured they could go somewhere like maybe the back porch, not an empty bedroom, but whatever, he was the one who had led them in here. Anyway. They could go somewhere and Steve would explain that he _had_ been ignoring Bucky because he was having two large scale internal crises and Bucky - more specifically, having sex with Bucky, had been the direct cause of… both of them. And then, he wasn’t sure, maybe they would decide to be friends. He certainly wasn’t planning on telling Bucky that he’s maybe very possibly quite definitely in love with him.

Thinking about being in a space alone with Bucky and actually being in a space alone with Bucky, he finds out quickly, are not the same at all. Mostly on account of he can’t stop thinking about how it would only take a few steps to cross the room to Bucky and kiss him. Steve shakes his head.

“You weren’t at the game,” he says after a moment. Bucky gives him a look like he might start hitting him with the nearest object to him. “We lost.”

“Okay. No bullshit,” Bucky says, ignoring what Steve said. “Why have you been avoiding me?”

Not where Steve would have started, he thinks, but might as well. For a minute, he thinks about what to say. How to tell Bucky that he’s been going through the biggest internal crisis of his life, that he’s been questioning everything he thought he knew about himself, that he hasn’t stopped, can’t stop thinking about being with him. That he’s in love with him. Maybe. A little bit.

“I’m sorry,” he says eventually. Finally, he looks at Bucky dead on, and something in his expression softens.

“I’m not mad – well, I am, but that’s not the point. I just want to know why.”

“It’s not… easy being your friend,” Steve says. Bucky raises an eyebrow.

“Wow. Okay.”

“Fuck,” Steve mutters, “okay, I didn’t mean it like that. Obviously.”

“Then please explain,” Bucky says, shrugging slightly. Steve wants to, would love to explain, but he can’t. He tries, opens his mouth, but the words are stuck heavy in his chest. He looks at Bucky, tries to plead with his eyes. Bucky’s hair is falling into his face and he looks so soft, so _sad._ It breaks Steve’s heart.

“You don’t have to tell me anything,” Bucky says, almost a whisper. “Nothing that you don’t want to.”

“I want to tell you everything,” Steve breathes out. He moves to sit on the edge of the bed, hands clasped. Bucky sits next to him without hesitation.

“Then start talking,” he says. “But take off those stupid Clark Kent glasses first. You look better without them anyway.” Steve laughs, a shaky thing,

“Thanks.” Bucky smiles at him, and that’s enough. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. I wasn’t trying to cut you out or anything like that. I was just. I don’t know. Scared.”

“Of what?” Bucky asks. He bumps his shoulder against Steve’s and lets it rest there. Steve feels like he’s back on solid ground.

“You. What you do to me,” Steve admits. “Myself, too. Everything.”

“Okay,” Bucky nods.

“After we slept together, I called my mom,” Steve says, and Bucky laughs.

“Of course you did.”

“Shut up,” Steve grins, lets himself laugh along. “I told her I had a friend who was religious but he had been thinking lately that he might like girls and guys and he was having a really hard time with it.”

“She bought that?” Bucky asks. “I’m not trying to be rude, sorry, it just sounds so vague.”

“Well, I might have told her it was Scott,” Steve says. He wrings his hands, feels his neck and face getting hotter. Bucky gives him a grin of approval but says nothing. “I hated lying to her, but I didn’t know how she was going to react. I couldn’t risk it. Especially when I didn’t even really know, at the time, if I was or not. But I talked to her, and it helped. And I talked to Wanda. Well, Nat, before that, but -,”

“Hold on,” Bucky shakes his head, “you talked to Nat about this?”

“Um, not so much as she talked to me. Interrogated me, really. About one thing.”

“What?” Bucky asks.

“That’s, uh, confidential,” Steve says. Bucky narrows his eyes. “Anyway. I talked to Wanda. And she helped me a lot. But I was still, I don’t know, I felt so exhausted all the time. I couldn’t stop thinking about that night. I thought maybe if I just stopped seeing you, stopped talking to you – I don’t know.” Bucky looks at him for a long moment, quiet, and then takes a breath.

“I just – okay, we agreed to be friends and to try and make sure things weren’t awkward between us, and then we stopped talking, and I don’t understand _why._ I want to understand why. If I – if it was something I did, if I made you uncomfortable in any way, anything, I want to know. Explain it to me.”

“You didn’t do anything wrong, I just. I’m not the best with words. I didn’t know how to tell you, or anyone else, really, that I needed space. Or whatever. But my brain sort of pinpointed you as the catalyst of all this, I guess, and I figured that if I didn’t think about you, or the party, or anything, then maybe I would just forget. And it turned into me thinking that the next logical step was just not talking to you, because… because.”

“Hiding something doesn’t make it go away, Steve,” Bucky says quietly.

“I know. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I’ve been such an asshole to you lately.”

“Like I said, I’m not mad. I’m just confused.” Steve looks at Bucky – he looks earnest, ready to listen to whatever Steve has to say. He thinks, not for the first time, that Bucky is too good for him.

“I guess it just wasn’t ever something I thought about,” he says after some silence. “It’s not like my mom was drilling into my head that if I liked guys I’d be shipped off to conversion camp the day anyone found out, or anything. It just wasn’t really an option. We went to church every single Sunday – a boy in my confirmation class came out to his parents when we were sixteen and they kicked him out the same night. Nobody at church ever even acted like they had a son.”

“Jesus Christ,” Bucky breathes out. “Sorry, keep going.” Steve shrugs,

“I think I told myself that it wasn’t true more than anyone, probably. That if I thought a boy was cute – and looking back, I did, I just repressed the hell out of it – I had to ignore it. So I just kept telling myself I was straight, no questions asked. And then, y’know. The party.”

“The party,” Bucky echoes.

“If I had ever even entertained the thought of liking girls _and_ guys, it probably wouldn’t have brought my world crashing down around me as hard as it did. But it did.” Steve takes a deep breath and starts reminding himself to try and get out coherent words, because this is all the stuff he really wants Bucky to hear. “Waking up in bed with one of your best friends is not really the best way to ease yourself into figuring out your sexuality, but hey. That’s what I got.”

“I’m sorry,” Bucky says, and Steve shakes his head.

“It wasn’t your fault.”

“Yeah, I know, it’s just – this all could have been easier for you.”

“Not really,” Steve says, shrugging. “Not with the way I was raised, or the way everybody sees me – straight, Catholic football player.”

“If, uh, if that’s all people see when they’re looking at you, they’re really missing out,” Bucky says. Steve looks at him, and has a fleeting thought of how easy it would be to lean down and kiss Bucky, right now. He smiles at him instead, then turns away.

“Thanks,” he says. “Sometimes I feel like there isn’t much more to me than that.”

“I beg to differ.”

“I don’t regret it, y’know?” Steve says, turning to look at Bucky again. “These last few weeks – months, I guess – haven’t been easy, but. I don’t regret what happened.”

“Well, it’s nice to know I didn’t disappoint,” Bucky laughs. It makes Steve feel warm. “Glad I could be a nice first gay experience for you.”

“Much appreciated,” Steve says, fighting a blush. “Anyway, after the party, I thought maybe we could just act like it never happened, which didn’t work, obviously. But once I convinced myself that it was just a drunken mistake, I figured we could just talk about it, move on, it wouldn’t ever mean anything.” He comes up short and takes another breath. Bucky reaches over, tentatively placing his hand on Steve’s shoulder for a moment.

“You don’t have to tell me anything else if you don’t want to,” he says. Steve closes his eyes, breathes, opens them again.

“Like I said. I want to tell you everything.”

“Okay,” Bucky nods.

“The biggest problem was that I couldn’t stop thinking about it, no matter how much I tried. I talked to you, my mom, myself. Hell, I even talked to God. I don’t really know – I haven’t known for the past few years if I even believe in God. But I had to talk to somebody. Because it wouldn’t go away. Every single day I was thinking about that night at the party, about whether or not I liked guys, did I still like girls, could I like both. It was overwhelming. It was too much. I’m sorry, Buck.”

“Why are you apologizing?”

“Because when it got to be too much, I hurt you. I thought if we weren’t talking, I could stop thinking about it. I could just be straight and it would all go away. I didn’t stop to think that maybe you were the person I should have been talking to all along.”

“Steve, you were scared. You spent your entire life thinking this one thing about yourself – that you were straight – and then something happened that made you question everything you thought you knew about _you._ The person you’re supposed to know better than anyone else. It’s _scary._ It’s not easy.”

“I – still. I shouldn’t have done that to you,” Steve says. He almost wishes Bucky wasn’t so goddamn understanding.

“No,” Bucky agrees. “But I understand.”

“You shouldn’t have to understand!” Steve says. “You should be mad! Why aren’t you mad?”

“Because you were _hurting_ , Steve. You were only doing something you thought was going to help you, even if it was a little misguided. I’m not going to act like it didn’t hurt. For a little while, I felt like I was going crazy. First there was the awkwardness after the party, but then we said we wanted to be friends. And we were, and I thought everything was going fine, but then you stopped talking to me. And then the night we all had pizza, me and you were back to being friends. And then – this is stupid, but I honestly thought we were almost flirting that night.”

“It’s not stupid,” Steve says, looking at him. Bucky looks away.

“Well, anyway, then it was weird again. I thought I was losing my fucking mind. But I understand a little now. I just wish you would have known at the time that you could have talked to me – you could have talked to me about what was going on or even just told me you needed some space, and explained it a little bit and I would have understood.” Steve cracks a small smile,

“It’s not that easy to tell your friend that you need some space because you’ve been trying to figure out your sexuality and whether or not you have some kind of feelings for him.”

 _Fucking hell shit god motherfucker,_ is Steve’s immediate thought. Bucky looks at him, and Steve doesn’t even have the vocabulary to figure out what he’s thinking based on how he’s looking at him.

“Okay, well, um. I’m sorry. Um. I wasn’t actually going to tell you that. I just, um, it kind of -,”

“You’re really cute when you’re rambling like this, but will you shut up for a second?” Bucky says. Steve feels like his brain is mush.

“I’m – wh -,” he starts, but he can’t get out much more than that, because Bucky is kissing him. Bucky has one hand on either side of Steve’s face, and he’s kissing him. It takes Steve’s brain a second to start working again before he kisses Bucky back, tangling one hand in his hair. For all the times Steve had thought about this in the weeks since the last party, nothing compares to the real thing.

“So,” Bucky says when they break apart.

“I like you,” Steve says in a rush. He leans in for another kiss, and Bucky laughs.

“This would have all been a lot easier if you led with that.”

“Wait, so you -,” Steve moves back a little and stares at Bucky. “Since when? The party?” Bucky takes a deep breath.

“Sophomore year I went out to eat at Waffle House with Sam and Clint and Nat, and Sam said that he invited someone from one of his classes because he seemed cool. It was pouring the rain and you walked in, like, five minutes later, soaking wet with a huge smile on your face and then you ordered three plates of food and ate all of them. I thought you were the cutest guy I’d ever seen and I’ve thought that pretty much ever since then.”

Steve doesn’t know what to say, so he leans in and kisses Bucky again. It’s softer this time. Steve feels lightheaded. When they break apart, Bucky giggles, and Steve has a passing thought of being absolutely head over heels, but he doesn’t say anything about it.

“Will you come to the homecoming game tomorrow?” Is what he actually says. Bucky makes a face.

“ _That’s_ what you’re thinking about right now?”

“Not entirely,” Steve says. Bucky bites his lip. “Will you? I kind of think you’re my good luck charm, since you were at the first game I played in and we won.” Bucky rolls his eyes.

“Fine. I guess I have to,” he says. “I can’t miss my boyfriend’s games.” Steve’s face goes red, fully blushes, and Bucky lets out a loud peal of laughter. “Oh my god, you’re blushing!”

“Shut up! It’s not funny,” Steve says. “No one has ever called me that before.” Bucky stops laughing and looks at him.

“What?”

“What?” Steve repeats. “It’s true.”

“You’ve never dated anyone?” Bucky asks. Steve shakes his head.

“I mean, I’ve hooked up with some people,” he says, looking pointedly at Bucky, “but never actually, like, dated anyone.”

“Because you were waiting for someone special?” Bucky asks dramatically, batting his eyelashes.

“No. The guy I like is actually kind of an ass,” Steve says.

“Okay, rude,” Bucky says, but he’s laughing, and Steve is happy.

-

Steve doesn’t really know when they fell asleep, but he wakes up the next morning with Bucky asleep against his chest and, okay, maybe he could get used to being his boyfriend if it means getting this.

“Morning, sleeping beauty,” Bucky says once he sees that Steve is awake.

“I think I’m technically Rapunzel, given your costume.”

“Yeah, but nobody says that.”

“Is everybody else still here?” Steve asks after a moment. Bucky sits up and pushes his hair out of his face.

“I think so. I definitely heard Sam and Nat’s voices, so.” Steve nods, looks around the room. “What’s wrong?”

“Are we telling them?” He asks. He’s not out, not really, but Bucky is, and he doesn’t know if that’ll be weird.

“Whatever you want,” Bucky says. “I’m following your lead. Do you want to?” Steve considers it for a second – Wanda already knows, he thinks Natasha knows, and he doesn’t really see any of the guys having a problem with it. He nods.

“Yeah,” he says. “I do.”

“Okay,” Bucky says. “Then I have an idea.” Against his better judgement, Steve follows him out of the room and down the hall. Everybody is sitting in the kitchen, Scott is frying something on the stove and Natasha is perched on the counter.

“Hey guys,” Clint says when they walk in, far too perky for how much he was drinking the night before. “Hungry?”

“I could eat,” Steve says, graciously taking a plate from Scott that’s loaded down with eggs and sausage. He takes one of the empty seats at the table, and Bucky sits next to him, picking off of his plate. Whatever conversation had being happening before they came in continues, and Bucky glances over at him. Steve nods at him. Bucky clears his throat.

“So,” he says, then waits for everybody to stop so the only noise is the sizzling coming from Scott’s pan. “Steve and I are dating.”

Steve almost chokes on his bite of egg – he hadn’t expected it to be quite so blunt – but no one else reacts in the slightest.

“Finally,” Natasha says. There’s a murmur of agreement, and they all go back to their conversations.

“Wh – hold on, what?” Bucky says. “That’s it? No surprise? No congratulations?”

“Congratulations,” Sam shrugs. “No surprise, though.”

“What?” Bucky repeats, sounding absolutely exasperated. Steve bites back a laugh.

“Yeah, we’ve kind of been waiting on this for a while – oh shit, that reminds me,” Clint stops and pulls a twenty dollar bill out of his pocket and slides it across the table to Anna Marie. “You win.”

“You bet on when we would get together?” Steve asks, more impressed than angry.

“You guys are, like, hilariously oblivious to each other specifically. It’s kind of sad,” Anna Marie says, tucking the twenty into her phone case and shrugging at them. “But thanks for the cash.”

“Oh, I hate you all,” Bucky grumbles, and Steve can’t hold back his laughter anymore. “It isn’t funny!”

“It kind of is,” he says, and Bucky smacks him on the arm.

“More of a relief than anything else,” Clint says. “Now I can have my room back after we have parties.”

“Might wanna wash your sheets,” Bucky says causally, taking another bite off of Steve’s food. Steve nearly chokes, again, and Natasha lets out a rare loud laugh.

“Oh, fuck you,” Clint exclaims. “Again?” Bucky just smirks at him, and Clint storms off to his room. Sam raises his eyebrows in their direction.

“Yeah, no, we didn’t actually do anything. But God, isn’t it fun to make him mad?” Bucky grins. Sam sighs and goes off, presumably to console Clint about his sheets, and Wanda nudges Steve’s leg from the other side of the table. _Good job,_ she mouths at him, and Steve smiles back. Later, he’s sure he’ll tell her everything, and they’ll tell Clint that it was a joke and maybe he’ll think it was funny. All later. For now, Steve thinks, in the cramped kitchen with Bucky’s head leaning against his shoulder, this is enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hope you all enjoyed! i tried to end this on a sweet note because the next chapter is, uh. pretty tough. all i have to say rn is definitely heed the warnings in the beginning author's note when it goes up
> 
> that's all i got, comments/kudos feed my family. i'm @ teamcaps on tumblr if you wanna find me!


	7. seven.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey guys! i don't have much to say for this note, i just want to warn you that this chapter features **general homophobia, harassment, and homophobic slurs**. this chapter is NOT tony stark friendly. 
> 
> that's all i got. uh, sorry.

The worst part of dating Steve, Bucky finds out the next day, is agreeing to go to the football games. He’s on the front row of the bleachers between Clint and Nat, who looks like she might give him a swift kick in the balls if he complains again.

“I’m _cold_ ,” he whines anyway, and Nat whips her head around and fixes him with a glare.

“Quit whining,” Sam says – shouts, really, so Bucky can hear him over the crowd. “Steve offered you his jacket before he left. You did this to yourself.”

“Maybe,” Bucky says, teeth chattering. He pulls his thin hoodie around himself as tight as he can and makes a mental note to start keeping it in his car for Steve again, because it doesn’t smell good anymore. He doesn’t say any of this out loud, on account of he doesn’t want one of his friends to whack him with something. _It’s not that we aren’t happy for you guys,_ Nat had said before they left Clint and Scott’s apartment and headed to the field, _it’s that you were already annoyingly obsessed with each other before this, and we all know you’re going to be worse now. We love you, we just want there to be boundaries._

Bucky couldn’t even be mad, not really, because he certainly planned on calling Steve his boyfriend to everyone they knew as long as Steve would let him. Hey, honeymoon phase, right?

“Oh my god, here,” Wanda says after Bucky makes a show of pulling his knees up to his chest and shivering. She pulls off the blanket she had draped over her lap and passes it forward to him, then grins as she links arms with Anna Marie and gets as close to her as she can. “I have my girlfriend to keep me warm anyway.”

“Rude,” Bucky says, but takes the blanket graciously and wraps it around his shoulders. He tries to pay a lot of attention to the game rather than just to how good Steve looks in his uniform – and smiles to himself, because he can think stuff like that without feeling bad about it now – but he still doesn’t understand it. Scott had tried to explain it to him again on their walk from the apartment to the field, but Bucky had to tap out when he started feeling lightheaded. He knows that they’re winning, though, and, again, he figures he doesn’t actually need to know much else besides that. The second quarter ends with them over ten points ahead of whoever they’re playing – Bucky has absolutely no idea – and as the team is walking off, Steve spots them in the crowd. They start cheering wildly, earning them several glares from people in the bleachers around them, but none of them care much. Bucky blows him a kiss, which he pretends to catch, and Sam starts making wretching noises at them.

“I agree,” Scott says from behind them, bumping Bucky playfully with his knee.

“You’re all mean,” Bucky says matter-of-factly. He glances at the clock on the scoreboard to see how long halftime is, and figures he’s got enough time, so he stands up and passes the blanket back to Wanda and Anna Marie. “Anybody want food?” He makes a list on his phone and tells Clint he is absolutely not buying him six hot dogs, get them yourself, and makes his way out of the bleachers to the concession stands. He’s already been in line for a minute when somebody comes up next to him and bumps his shoulder – an alarming enough thing for him to turn, prepared to punch someone in the nose if he has to, but it’s just Steve.

“Oh,” Bucky says, surprised. “Hey.”

“That’s all I get?” Steve asks, feigning offense.

“I could have kissed you fully on the mouth if you think that would be more discreet,” Bucky says playfully. Steve rolls his eyes. “I didn’t know you could leave during halftime.” Steve holds a finger up to his mouth and winks, and, okay, maybe Bucky loves him a little bit. It’s no big deal.

“I brought you this,” Steve says. Bucky hadn’t noticed he’d been carrying anything, but his heart warms a little when Steve extends his arm and Bucky sees the jacket he’d offered him earlier.

“Competing for boyfriend of the year, are you?” Bucky teases, sliding the jacket on over his hoodie. It’s brown fake leather and it’s just a little too big for him and it smells like Steve’s cologne. He looks back over at Steve, who is just staring at him. “What?”

“Nothing,” Steve says, “you’re just the best looking guy I’ve ever seen, that’s all.” Bucky rolls his eyes, but he smiles.

“That’s all, huh? You’re really laying it on thick, Rogers, almost makes me think you’re being sweet because you want something.”

“Maybe,” Steve singsongs, dragging out the A. “Listen, um, my roommate is leaving tonight after the game if you want to come back to my dorm.”

“I don’t know how thick you think dorm walls are, but -,”

“No, oh my God,” Steve cuts him off. “I just want to spend time with you. Not that I don’t also want to, y’know, uh. Yeah.” Bucky laughs, but he loops his arm through Steve’s.

“You’re cute when you’re nervous,” he says. “Yeah, I’ll come over.”

“Good,” Steve says, grinning. He leans in for a split second, then he stops and looks around. Bucky tries to give him a look that’s as reassuring as he can to make sure Steve knows they don’t have to do anything since there are so many people around. “I gotta go, meet me after the game?” Bucky nods and Steve walks off, and he pulls the jacket around himself more tightly. He’s fine with no PDA, really, for as long as Steve is still getting comfortable with being out – for however long he needs. But he can’t lie, it would be nice to be able to kiss his boyfriend in public. And it isn’t just Steve, he knows, Bucky has always been careful with things like that. There are still people who would rather see them dead than holding hands. He can’t risk it.

Eventually he gets to the front of the line and racks up a pretty hefty bill getting all of their food, but he pays and manages to get all the way back to his spot in the bleachers without dropping anything.

“Nice jacket,” Nat says.

“Thanks,” Bucky says sweetly. “My boyfriend gave it to me.” Scott throws a fry at the back of his head and Bucky reaches around and smacks at him, grinning.

“You and Steve are going to take over the role of annoyingly lovey couple, I see,” Clint says.

“From who?” Hope asks from her place next to Scott.

“Wanda and Anna Marie, obviously,” Clint says through a bite of hot dog. Sam makes a face at him.

“That’s disgusting, swallow your food before you talk,” Wanda says. “Also, we are not annoyingly lovey. You didn’t even know we were dating until, like, two weeks ago.”

“He’s not the brightest,” Sam says, watching as Clint eats the entire second half of his hot dog in one bite. “At least none of you are dating him.”

“You did that to yourself,” Bucky points out. Nat nods in agreement.

“I know,” Sam sighs.

“Hey,” Clint says after he finishes and licks the ketchup off of his fingers, “I am a fucking delight.”

Through the second half of the game, Bucky pays more attention to what’s actually happening, and not just because Nat tells him to _“stop staring at Rogers’ butt, Barnes”_ during the third quarter. He cheers when everyone else does even if he doesn’t know exactly why they’re cheering, and he joins in with everyone who starts chanting Steve’s name when he scores the last touchdown and they win the game. Steve takes off his helmet and spots them in the crowed, looking flushed and also a little embarrassed at all the attention, and Bucky shoots him two thumbs up. Steve grins at him and gives him two back.

“Okay, anybody wanna go get food with us?” Scott asks as they’re filing out of the stands, holding up his and Hope’s intertwined hands. There’s a general murmur of agreement, and once they’re mostly out of the crowd and walking as a group, they decide on an old classic – Waffle House.

“I’m gonna go find Steve,” Bucky says, walking off a little bit. “We’ll meet you guys there, yeah?”

It isn’t a very long walk from where they are to the locker rooms, and it isn’t very hard to find Steve, either. Bucky hangs around for a second as a few of the other players walk past him and go inside and then Steve comes out, a little sweaty and red in the face, but all in one piece.

“Phenomenal playing skills,” Bucky says when Steve spots him.

“You had no idea what was going on, did you?” Steve laughs, coming to a stop in front of Bucky. He looks at him – up, just a little, because Steve is a few inches taller than he is – and shakes his head.

“Not a goddamn clue,” he says. “Everybody is going out to Waffle House to eat and I told them we’d meet them there, if that’s okay, and we can go back to your dorm after.”

“Sounds good,” Steve nods. He goes to sling his arm around Bucky’s shoulder, but Bucky dodges it.

“No way. You smell horrible, football star. Take a shower and then I’ll get close to you.” Steve grins, then glances around them and makes a dive for Bucky, grabbing his waist and leaning in close. Bucky is laughing too much to care about whether or not Steve smells, and he’s about to lean in because there’s nobody around right now, but,

“Oh my god, what the fuck?” A voice says from somewhere around them. Bucky jumps back and looks around, trying to find whoever it is. He almost thinks it could be one of their friends being an ass, but then it isn’t. Tony – Steve’s roommate, Bucky knows – is coming from the direction of the field, followed by a group of other football players. “Getting a little cozy over here, Barnes,” he says. Bucky doesn’t know how he even recognizes him, but that isn’t what’s important, because Tony’s eyes move from Bucky to Steve, and he gets a look on his face.

“What do you want, Stark?” Steve asks through gritted teeth.

“You could do so much better,” Tony tsks. “You spend too much time with him, he’ll turn you into a fag, too.” Bucky flinches.

“Didn’t seem like he needed much help,” one of the other football players says, and Tony laughs.

“You know what, you’re right. You a fag now, Rogers?” Steve doesn’t answer, doesn’t move, and Bucky doesn’t either. Tony and the other players are still a pretty safe distance from them, but Bucky doesn’t want to risk anything, and, God, they should have just left as soon as Steve came out of the locker rooms. “Actually, y’know, that’s fine. Not a big deal at all. Be a queer if you want, but you can do a lot better than pillow biter Barnes.”

“What did you call him?” Steve bites, stepping forward. Bucky reaches out and grabs his arm to stop him from getting too far.

“Steve, it’s not worth it. Let’s go.”

“Pillow biter Barnes,” Tony repeats. Bucky ignores him, trying to pull Steve back, but Steve is bigger than him, and he has a look on his face that Bucky has never seen before, one of absolute anger.

“Keep his name out of your goddamn mouth, Tony,” Steve says, but he doesn’t step forward. Bucky grabs his arm again, just in case.

“Aw, c’mon, I got more where that came from,” Tony sneers. “Let’s see. Butt boy Barnes? Backdoor Barnes? It’s a pretty easy name to work with, don’t you think?” Steve looks completely enraged, and Bucky steps in front of him.

“Steve, let’s go. It’s not worth it. It’s fine.”

“It’s not _fine,_ Bucky.”

“I’ve heard worse, I promise. Let’s just go,” he says, looking straight at him. “Please?” Steve looks back at him, and something in his expression softens. He lets out a breath.

“Okay,” he says. Bucky breathes out a sigh of relief. Steve shoots Tony one last glare then turns around, and they’ve gone about ten steps when Tony calls out,

“What, that’s it? Maybe you’re the pillow biter, doing whatever he wants you to. Or maybe you’re just too much of a pussy to fight back.”

Bucky tries his best to grab Steve’s arm, but Steve is bigger and faster than he is, and he’s turned around and going back towards Tony before Bucky can even move from his spot. He knocks Tony to the ground pretty quickly, and he gets in a couple of good punches before Tony gets the upper hand on him and knocks him off. He lands a pretty solid punch to Steve’s face right about the time Bucky gets to them. One of the other football players manages to get in and grab Tony and pull him back, and Bucky takes Steve’s hands and pulls him up off the ground. His knuckles are red and he’s definitely going to have a black eye, but that’s it, and Bucky thanks God or whoever that it is.

“Let’s go,” he says again, pulling Steve away. He goes after him easily, shaking his hands. Tony calls something out after them, but Bucky keeps a tight grip on Steve until they’re far out of earshot. After a minute of walking in silence, Bucky comes to a stop and turns on his heels to look at Steve. “Oh my God, why did you do that?”

“What?” Steve asks, dumbfounded. “Are you mad?”

“No,” Bucky says, and he’s not, “but we should have just _left_ , Steve.”

“I wasn’t going to let him talk about us like that, Buck. Especially not you. I mean, God, the stuff he was saying-,”

“Like I said, I’ve heard worse. It wasn’t worth it, Steve.”

“What?”

“It wasn’t worth it!”

“What – yes it was, Bucky. He can’t just say shit like that, I had to say something. Didn’t you want to?”

“Of course I did,” Bucky sighs. “That’s not the point.”

“Then what _is_ the point?”

“The point is that you can’t just – you can’t just do shit like that when this stuff happens, okay? At least this time it was just Tony. Any of those other guys could have jumped in whenever they wanted to, and you couldn’t have taken all of them.”

“I could have tried,” Steve insists. “I can’t just stand and let that kind of stuff happen, not when I can try to do something about it. We shouldn’t have to.”

“I’m not saying we _should_ , but, Steve. You can’t just jump in without like, I don’t know, assessing the situation or something! What if we had been out on the street somewhere and someone we didn’t know started harassing us like that?”

“I would have done the same thing,” Steve says quickly. Bucky looks at him, pleading.

“Steve, it’s not safe. There are people out there who really want to hurt us, and there are people who would if they had the opportunity.”

“I know that, Bucky, I’m not stupid. But I can’t stand by and watch this stuff happen, okay? Not just to us, to anyone. Would you have rather I just let them say that stuff about you and walked away when you asked? If I run away once, I can do it every time, but I won’t let myself.” Steve says. Bucky sighs – he has no idea how to get his point across, and he understands where Steve is coming from, but Steve needs to understand too.

“I understand that, I’m just saying that this one time, it would have been best for us to just ignore it.”

“Bucky, I had to stand up for you. I _wanted_ to. I wasn’t going to let them talk about you like that.”

“And I appreciate that so much, I promise I do,” Bucky says quickly. “But it wasn’t worth it. And it sure as hell wouldn’t have been worth it if you had gotten seriously hurt.”

“But I _didn’t_ -,”

“Not this time,” Bucky cuts him off. “But that won’t always be the case.” He goes quiet, and Steve does too, and Bucky can see that there won’t be a pleasant end to this. No wrapping it up and putting a little bow on it, and no kind of actual conversation about it while they’re both so fired up. And, frankly, he just doesn’t have the energy. He’s not the type to give up easily, but he knows something that’s just going to be a dead end when he sees one.

In his mind, he doesn’t know if he’s talking about the argument, or about… them. Maybe things can’t just be easy like they had felt the night before. Maybe Bucky is destined to fuck up good things that come into his life. He takes a deep breath.

“I think I’m just gonna go home,” he says quietly. Steve looks at him – he looks defeated.

“Yeah,” he says. “Me too.” Bucky nods, and they stand in place for a second, and then he turns and goes in the other direction. It’s not the best route; he would get back to their hall much faster if he went the same way as Steve, but that doesn’t seem like an option right now. So he walks.

After about ten minutes, he thinks about turning back around and catching up with Steve and trying again. Explaining. But he can’t think of anything to say that wouldn’t sound like he’s just repeating everything he already told him. He can’t pin down why it bothered him so badly to stand there and not be able to get Steve to just leave it alone, to walk away. Why it felt like someone was having a go at his insides with a hot poker when Tony got Steve onto the ground. The obvious answer, he knows, is that he cares about Steve and he didn’t want to stand there and watch somebody hurt him. But it feels like more. It makes him feel sick.

He doesn’t turn around.

He’s over halfway back to the dorms when his phone starts buzzing in his pocket, and it dawns on him suddenly that it’s way past when they should have been at Waffle House. Sam’s name shines on his screen, and he slides the little phone to the right.

“Hey,” he says simply.

“Where are you guys?” Sam asks. Bucky can hear the noise of everyone else in the background.

“Um, listen, we aren’t gonna come, okay?”

“Don’t tell me you guys are bailing on us to go bone somewhere,” Sam says. Bucky laughs, but it’s watery, and, fuck, when did he start crying?

“No,” he says. “No, um.” He stops. He doesn’t know what to say – he can’t explain the whole thing over the phone. He doesn’t want to say that he and Steve broke up, because he doesn’t think they did, he hopes to God they didn’t.

“Hey, what’s wrong? Did something happen?”

“No,” Bucky says quickly, then closes his eyes and takes a breath. “Well, yeah, but I don’t. I’ll tell you later, okay? See you tomorrow?”

“Yeah, man,” Sam says quietly, not that he needs to. Bucky doesn’t hear noise in the background anymore. “Call me if you need me, okay?”

“Yeah,” Bucky says, then hangs up. He stops in his tracks and opens his texts, looks at Steve’s thread. The last one stares up at him like it’s laughing at him – _okay, see you after the game <3 _– and he closes the app and turns his phone on silent and sticks it back in the pocket of his jacket.

No, Steve’s jacket, he remembers. He feels sick. When he finally gets back to his room, thanking God that he didn’t bump into Steve anywhere in the hall, he takes off the jacket and throws it unceremoniously onto the floor. He goes into the bathroom and splashes water on his face to make it less obvious that he’s been crying even though no one will see him.

He picks up the jacket off of the floor, takes his phone out of the pocket, and slips it back on over his pajamas. Not the most fashionable nighttime look, and not the most comfortable either, but he falls asleep in it anyway.


	8. eight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay! last chapter y'all!
> 
> this was originally two chapters but 9 was going to be too short and it just worked better as one, so hopefully it doesn't seem rushed.
> 
> this chapter has mentions of the events of last chapter and discusses hate crimes, just so everyone knows.
> 
> enjoy!

On Sunday, Steve packs a suitcase full of his stuff and makes his way across campus to Clint and Scott’s apartment. He had called Scott after he got back to his dorm the night before and told him some vague details about what happened, because he didn’t really want to get into it, and asked if he could stay with them for a while because he didn’t feel safe in his dorm.

He could almost laugh at that. He never thought of himself as someone who could feel unsafe at his goddamn school of all places, but that was before. He remembers what Wanda told him about how it’s okay to feel scared, but he isn’t. Not anymore. He’s just angry.

“Thanks again for letting me crash here, guys,” he says while he’s wheeling his suitcase into the apartment.

“Of course, man,” Scott says, clapping him on the shoulder. “Sorry you have to sleep on the shitty guest bed.” Steve waves him off.

“It’s fine, don’t worry about it. I’ll try to be out of your hair in a few days, I promise.”

“You can stay here as long as you want,” Clint says. Steve has never seen him this quiet before – it’s unsettling. He had only really given them the bare minimum details of what happened: he and Bucky were on their way to celebrate with everyone and Tony and some of the other football players caught them and it got out of hand. He doesn’t tell them about the actual physical fight, but he’s pretty sure they can piece it together given his black eye.

He hasn’t really had time to process all of it, if he’s being honest. A lot of things happened really fast. It went from being one of the better days of his life to one of the worst in no time flat, and now he’s hiding away in his friends’ apartment with a black eye and no idea where he stands with Bucky. He could laugh, but it’s not very funny.

Scott and Clint show him back to the guest room and then they go off to their own rooms – or, that’s what he assumes anyway – and he starts pulling some of his clothes out of his suitcase. The room isn’t very big or very furnished, but it feels like a fucking safe haven compared to how he felt sleeping in his dorm. As he unpacks his suitcase, he can’t keep his mind off of Bucky. They haven’t talked since the night before, and it’s killing him. He doesn’t know how their argument turned into a full-blown not-speaking-to-each-other fight. It makes him feel sick. After spending the last while not talking to Bucky – of his own volition, sure, but still – he had been pretty prepared to spend as much time with him and talk to him as much as he possibly could after the Halloween party. How the mighty fall, he thinks.

A little while later, as he’s shoving some of his underwear and pajamas into the broken little dresser sitting on the wall across from the bed, Clint opens the door and peeks in.

“Are you decent?” He asks. It sounds a little forced, but Steve doesn’t mention it.

“Uh, yeah,” Steve says. Clint walks all the way in and leaves the door open just a crack.

“Brought you this,” he says, holding out his hand. There’s a bag of frozen peas in it, dripping onto the carpet. “Thought you could use it.”

“Thanks,” Steve half-laughs and takes the bag from him. “Is it bad?” Clint shrugs.

“Not the worst I’ve seen,” he says. For a moment, he stands in front of Steve and shifts from one foot to the other. Steve is about to ask him if he’s okay when he moves, going to sit on the bed next to him. He rubs his hands on his knees, then finally says, “what happened?”

Steve lets out a long breath and fumbles the bag of peas between his hands. “Bucky was waiting outside the locker room for me. When I got out there we didn’t leave right away, we talked about going to meet everybody and just kind of stood around for a minute. We were, um, about to kiss when Tony and the other guys came up. They said some stuff about how if I spent too much time with Bucky then I would ‘be a fag too’. Stuff like that. They called Bucky, uh, pillow biter Barnes. That’s when I kind of lost it. Bucky calmed me down but when we were about to walk away he said I was the pillow biter. Called me a pussy. So I went back. I got in a few punches, he got one in too, obviously, before anybody could separate us. And then Bucky and I got into an argument on the way back, so, uh. Yeah.”

Clint looks like he might puke on the carpet. Steve reaches over and puts a hand on his shoulder. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” Clint breathes out, nodding a little. “I just, um. I guess I didn’t think stuff like that happened here because I’d never heard about it. I thought we were safe here, y’know, it’s the fucking 21st century and this is a pretty diverse school. But I guess that’s not enough to make us safe.”

“I guess not,” Steve says. “You sure you’re okay?”

Clint runs a hand through his hair. “I know it sounds kind of naïve and stupid for me to say I thought stuff like that didn’t happen here. More than that, I guess, I just… hoped it wouldn’t. Without going into all the gory details, uh, somebody was going to beat the living shit out of me in high school after I came out. One of my friends stepped in, but. Middle-of-fucking-nowhere, Iowa isn’t the most open-minded of places. I thought it would be different here. Hoped. But that sounds really stupid saying it out loud.”

“It’s not stupid,” Steve says earnestly. “There’s nothing bad about having hope.”

“What did you and Bucky argue about?” Clint asks, and Steve isn’t going to press if he wants to change the subject. “You don’t have to tell me, but. Sam said Bucky hasn’t gotten out of bed since last night when I talked to him earlier.” Steve’s heart sinks. How was it that, again, the very last person he’d ever want to hurt ended up being the only one he _did_ hurt?

“He said we should have just left when we had the chance, but I said I can’t just stand by and let people do stuff like that. Say stuff like that. Especially about somebody I – care about.” Clint looks at him some kind of way, but doesn’t say anything. “If I see something happening and I can step in and say something, what right do I have to stand on the sidelines?”

“I get that,” Clint says, “I really do. But, um. Bucky has been out since he was in high school, so, I’m gonna take a guess and say this isn’t the first time he’s had that kind of stuff said to him.”

“Yeah, he said something like that,” Steve says. “But, - yeah.”

“Just try to see where he’s coming from,” Clint says, standing up and making his way back towards the door. “Try to talk to him soon – maybe not today, but don’t freeze each other out. Oh, and put those peas on your eye.”

“Will do,” Steve says. Clint leaves the room and shuts the door behind him, and Steve pulls out his phone and opens it to his texts with Bucky, then closes it again. He doesn’t want a repeat of not talking to him again, but he figures they need a little time to decompress. He turns his screen back off and finishes unpacking his stuff. As he does he wonders, not for the first time that day, how he experienced the biggest high and low of his life within less than 48 hours.

-

He doesn’t talk to Bucky on Monday, and Bucky doesn’t talk to him either. Clint gives him a look when he gets back to the apartment after his last class, so Steve assumes that he and Sam have talked about something, but says nothing.

On Tuesday, he skips his first class – he has it with Bucky, Wanda, and Scott – and stays in bed until almost noon. He gets a text that night while he’s eating dinner with Scott and Clint, and he almost spits out his food when he looks and sees Bucky’s name on his screen. He opens it to see pictures of the notes he had taken in class that day and nothing else, but he smiles to himself anyway and sends back a heart emoji. Bucky reads it an hour later. Steve wants to slam his head into the wall.

Between his last two classes on Wednesday, Steve realizes he left one of his textbooks in his dorm when he was rushing to pack for the impromptu stay at Clint and Scott’s apartment. He has no choice but to turn on his route and stop by to get it – silently praying the entire way there that Tony will be in class or something. On Monday, with Scott and Clint’s persuasion, Steve had reported what happened to the coach. One of the other players, Steve is pretty sure his name is James, had given the same story, and Steve doesn’t really want to find out if Tony knows about his temporary suspension from the team right now.

He is, thankfully, not in the room. Steve grabs his textbook and throws some extra underwear and shirts in his backpack before making his way out, and stops in his tracks when he sees Tony walking down the hallway. He doesn’t say anything, but he makes some very long and uncomfortable eye contact and knocks his shoulder into Steve’s when he walks past. Steve thanks whoever might be listening that Tony didn’t say anything to him and starts down the stairs and back to the lobby. It’s here, of course, on the stairs between the first and second floors, that he almost full-body runs into Bucky.

“Hey,” Steve says, clenching his fingers around his textbook. Even that one word feels forced, and he hates it so fucking much.

“Hey,” Bucky says back. There’s a moment of tentative silence where Steve thinks one of them might say something, but it passes uneventfully. Bucky excuses himself and makes his way past Steve and up the stairs. Steve stops in his place for a minute, leans his head against the wall and curses himself for not breaking out in a full apology right there in the middle of the stairwell, and then he remembers he has class. He pushes thoughts of Bucky out of his mind, or, he tries to, and sits through his very boring class even if he hardly pays attention. When he gets back to the apartment after, Clint is sitting cross legged on the living room floor eating cold pizza and watching something on TV. Steve gives him a simple hey in greeting, and Clint waves back despite the slice of pizza in his hand. Steve is about to turn down the hallway when Clint says,

“Sam called me. He said Bucky seemed happier today. Just thought you’d like to know.”

The mention of Bucky’s name sends his stomach into dangerously warm and fluttery territory, but he doesn’t tell Clint that. “Thanks,” he says, smiling, and goes back into the guest room.

-

Steve comes very close to skipping his first class on Thursday. He shares it with just Bucky, and they’ve sat next to each other all semester – save for when they weren’t talking – but he’s not sure if that’ll be an option right now. On his way there, he thinks up a list of ten different excuses he could use in an email to his professor for why he wasn’t in class, but he opens the door of the classroom and goes in anyway.

Bucky is sitting in one of the back rows, arms curled around himself. He’s wearing Steve’s leather jacket. When he walks by, down to their usual seats, Bucky gives him a small smile. Steve returns it easily. It’s about the small victories, he tells himself. Steve is out of his seat almost as soon as their professor ends class, and when he passes Bucky, he gives him another smile. Bucky returns it, and it seems genuine.

Steve does a much better job at football practice that afternoon than he had the rest of the week.

-

On Friday night, they win their game. Steve isn’t one hundred percent crediting it to the fact that during the first quarter he had looked to his friends’ usual section and seen Bucky sitting there in his leather jacket, but he’s not saying it didn’t help, either.

While he’s in the locker room, his phone buzzes from its place on the bench he sat it on. He pulls his shirt on and sits down and grabs it to see Scott’s name on the screen: _we’re all going out to eat, u coming??_

He thinks about it for a second – he’d like to, sure, but he doesn’t think he can be with Bucky in a setting like that until after they’ve talked about what happened the week before, which he’s planning on trying to do the next day. His thumbs hover over the keyboard for a minute before he finally sends back: _I don’t think so, kinda worn out. Eat something for me to celebrate the win_. He’s got all his stuff ready to go when Scott texts him back, _u got it ;),_ and Steve doesn’t know what the winky face means, but he doesn’t think about it too hard either.

There’s no sign of Tony or any of the other football players outside the locker room, and he lets out a sigh of relief that he wishes he didn’t have to hold.

It’s a pretty long walk from the field to the apartment, and it’s a lot colder than he’d realized when he was heated up from playing. It almost makes him wish he hadn’t lent his leather jacket to Bucky, except, well – it doesn’t. Because when he does finally get there, Bucky is leaning on the front door of the place with the jacket wrapped around him and the wind blowing his hair around. Steve has a passing thought that he might love Bucky a lot more than he ever intended to.

“Good game,” Bucky calls out when Steve gets close enough to hear him.

“Yeah?” He asks. “Did Scott explain the rules to you again?”

“Oh, he tried,” Bucky says. “Did I listen? Well.” Steve gives a small laugh. He’s close enough now that, if he wanted to, he could get to Bucky and kiss him in just a few steps forward. He wants to. He doesn’t.

“I didn’t think you’d come,” he admits. Bucky shrugs.

“I wasn’t going to, but I remembered you saying something very sweet about me being your good luck charm and I figured I should try to help the team in any way I can,” he says, smiling a little. “You didn’t want to celebrate your victory with everyone else?”

“I don’t feel like I have that much to be celebrating right now, to be honest,” Steve says. He doesn’t want to come off as nervous, but that doesn’t stop him from rubbing his hand up and down his other arm. “Can we talk?”

“Kind of what I was hoping for,” Bucky says, backing off of the door. “Lead the way. Scott didn’t give me his key before they left.” Steve unlocks the door and leads them in, and flips on the overhead light in the living room. He puts his backpack down by the door and when he turns back, Bucky is staring at him. “So.”

“So,” Steve repeats. He doesn’t know where to start – none of the options going through his head sound good enough – so he goes with something simple. “I’m sorry.”

“Me too,” Bucky says quickly. “I, Jesus fuck, I shouldn’t have yelled at you after you had just been in a fight. I was just scared, I guess, and I turned it into anger. I didn’t need to take it out on you.”

“I wasn’t – I wasn’t staying there because I _wanted_ to get into a fight, Buck,” Steve says. “I just can’t let that kind of stuff slide if I see it happening, and it was happening to _you_ , I. I couldn’t just walk away from that.”

“As honorable as I think that is, Steve, you could have gotten hurt way worse than you did.”

“It wouldn’t have mattered,” Steve insists. “I got into a lot of fights as a kid, I know how it goes. But I couldn’t stand up for myself much then – I got hurt a lot. If I can do it now, for anyone, why shouldn’t I?”

Bucky sighs and pulls at the sleeves of the jacket, then moves and sits on the couch. He tilts his head toward the other side, and Steve sits down. “I know you want to stand up to stuff like that. And I get it. But it doesn’t always go like that, okay? I’ve had worse. Heard worse. I’m not gonna delve into all the bad details, because I don’t really like talking about it, but I’ve been out since I was fifteen. I took a boy to prom my junior year and some guys in the grade above me had a problem with that, so they took care of it by beating the shit out of us in the parking lot.”

“Jesus Christ, Buck, I’m so sorry,” Steve says. Bucky takes a deep breath.

“It’s fine. It’s not, obviously, but I’ve mostly gotten past it. And in the end, yeah, we were fine. But we didn’t even _do_ anything to them. I can’t imagine what would have happened if we tried to fight back. And yeah, you just got a black eye, but it was _just_ Tony this time. What if the other guys had joined in? What if one of them had a knife or something? What if next time it isn’t just some asshole trying to make his buddies laugh, what if it’s someone who seriously wants to hurt you?”

They sit in silence for a minute. Steve knows that Bucky has a point, he can see it clearly in front of him. But he can’t give up his side.

“I know there’s always that risk,” he says finally, “but I can’t just stand by and watch. I know I sound like a broken fucking record at this point, but I can’t. I don’t want to hurt anyone, either, but I can’t turn that into not helping people who are being hurt.”

“Steve, I understand that, I really do. I know that you want to step in and stand up for people who maybe can’t stand up for themselves, even if you do know the risks. It’s one of the things I love the most about you. But I can’t lose you like that.”

For a second, Steve stops and thinks he heard Bucky wrong. He opens his mouth to say something, then closes it again. Bucky is staring at him. Finally, he’s able to get out, “You what?”

“I can’t lose you like that,” Bucky repeats, giving Steve a funny look.

Steve shakes his head. “No, before that.”

He watches as Bucky backtracks in his head, and then something that Steve can’t quite name flashes across Bucky’s face.

“It’s one of the things I – love. About you. You. I love you.”

Steve pinches himself on the thigh as discreetly as possible just to make sure it isn’t the night after the homecoming game and he’s just having a nice little dream. Nothing happens, and he can’t quite help himself from smiling. Bucky is closer now, Steve notices for the first time, and he puts his hands on the sides of Steve’s face and pulls him in.

Steve missed this a lot more than he thought he did, he realizes pretty quickly. Kissing Bucky could very possibly be his favorite thing in the world. He doesn’t realize he’s got his hands on Bucky’s wrists until he feels the soft leather of the jacket sleeves on his palms. Bucky’s mouth is soft and tastes like mint gum, and when he finally breaks them apart Steve follows his mouth involuntarily. He drops his head onto Bucky’s shoulder for just a second, then pulls back and looks at him. Bucky is smiling, and Steve’s heart soars a little. He kisses Bucky again, for good measure, soft and quick.

“I can’t promise that I’ll never step in if I see something happening to someone, if I can help,” Steve says when he pulls back. “But I can promise I’ll try to be safer about it.”

“That’s all I ask,” Bucky says, then kisses Steve again. It gets pretty hot and heavy pretty fast, and Bucky is pulling at the hem of Steve’s shirt when he remembers something and pulls back, looking straight at Bucky, who looks just a little annoyed that they stopped.

“I love you, too,” Steve says. “You know that right.”

Bucky moves his head side to side as if he’s considering it. “I did not. Well, maybe. I can think of some ways you can prove it to me, though.”

-

“Hey,” Steve says after. They’re in his bed in the guest room, and Bucky is curled against his side and he shifts his head up so he can look at Steve. “We don’t have to make Clint wash his sheets for as long as I live here.”

Bucky gives him a playful smack, but then he buries his face in Steve’s shoulder and starts laughing. Steve laughs too and, for the first time, he feels like everything might be okay.

-

They win the final game of the season, and Bucky cheers louder than anyone else. Afterwards, on their way to eat – a group tradition now, it seems to him -, he loops his arm through Bucky’s and slows them down so they fall behind everyone else.

“Cold?” Bucky teases. “You’re never getting this jacket back.”

“Keep it,” Steve shrugs. “Looks better on you anyway.”

“You’re not wrong,” Bucky says, winking at him.

“So, listen,” Steve says. “My mom really wants to meet you, so I was wondering if you’d want to spend a few days at our house over winter break.” Steve had come out to her over Thanksgiving break and it had gone far, far better than he ever even thought possible, except now she was texting him every day asking when she would get to meet Bucky. It was very endearing and just a little annoying.

Bucky looks a little taken aback. “You want me to meet your mom?”

“Well, yeah,” Steve says. “I thought that was obvious.”

“I’ve never really been the meet-the-parents type,” Bucky shrugs. “Yeah, okay. I’d love to. But that means you have to do New Years with my family.”

“Deal,” Steve says, and he presses a kiss to the side of Bucky’s head.

“Knock it off back there, lovebirds,” Sam calls back to them, and Bucky rolls his eyes when everyone else laughs.

-

Despite Bucky’s fears that he had been voicing to Steve over the week before break, Sarah adores him, and Bucky warms up to her pretty fast, too.

After dinner, when Steve is helping her clean up the last of the dishes, she says, “I think this one is a keeper, Stevie.”

He’s inclined to agree, even if Bucky calls him Stevie relentlessly over the next few weeks after Sarah lets it slip over breakfast one morning. Steve loves them both enough that he doesn’t care.

-

“…three, two, one, happy new year!” The house calls unanimously. Bucky leans in – a quick peck, nothing more – and gives Steve the smile reserved exclusively for him. It makes Steve feel warm and fluttery, something he’s grown quite used to.

He has the passing thought, laying in bed with Bucky that night in his family’s guest room, that he doesn’t think he ever wants anybody else to be his new year’s kiss.

-

“It’s so fucking _cold_ ,” Bucky says for no less than the third time since they left their dorm. Steve had requested a roommate change before they went on winter break, and he was still in the same building as Bucky, but now he was sharing a room with a scrawny little science major named Bruce. He was nice enough, though, so Steve was fine with the arrangement.

“Oh, hush, you big baby,” Steve says, throwing his arm around Bucky’s shoulders and pulling him in as close as possible.  “The walk isn’t even that long.”

“Doesn’t make it any less cold,” Bucky complains. They’re already almost halfway to Clint and Scott’s apartment, but Bucky can’t be talked down once he gets started. They walk in silence for a minute, and then Steve remembers something.

“So, I was thinking-,”

“That’s dangerous stuff,” Bucky says. Steve rolls his eyes.

“Do you, uh, want to get an apartment together for next year? Since Sam is moving in with Clint anyway, and I’m not particularly crazy about dorm living anymore -,”

“Are you serious?” Bucky asks, bringing them to a stop. He’s looking at Steve with an expression that falls somewhere between being dumbfounded and being in love.

“Uh, yeah,” Steve says. “I just thought it would be, like, the best solution, y’know, instead of trying to share a dorm or something-,”

“Yes,” Bucky says. “Sorry I keep cutting you off, but. Yes.” Steve grins at him.

“Okay,” he says. He leans in then and kisses Bucky, short and sweet, and for the first time since they got together, he doesn’t look to see who might be around.

They’re almost to the door of the apartment when Bucky starts laughing.

“What?” Steve asks, narrowing his eyes.

“We can really cut Clint’s laundry bill in half when we stop making him think we had sex in his bed.” Steve rolls his eyes.

“I mean, we did.”

“Yeah,” Bucky says, opening the door and letting them in, “but only once.” He goes straight to the comfy corner of the couch and Steve takes the space to his left. Clint and Scott are on the floor in what seems to be a pretty heated argument over a card game, and Nat and Hope are curled up in their recliner watching with amusement. Wanda and Anna Marie come in a minute later, taking up the other end of the couch, and Sam comes in from the kitchen and asks Scott to please not murder his boyfriend, but tells him that it’s okay to hit him if he deserves it.

Steve looks around at them and, well, he’s fine. He’s home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> that's all, folks! i hope you guys enjoyed reading this, i had a lot of fun writing it and i hope the ending makes up for chapter 7, lol.
> 
> i love kudos/comments and you can find me on tumblr @ teamcaps if you're interested!

**Author's Note:**

> let me know what you think! i'm excited <3


End file.
